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TO THE MOON AND BACK 
IN NINETY DAYS 







JOEX YOUxXG BROWN 



To THE Moon 

AND 

Back in Ninety Days 



A THRILLING NARRATIVE OF BLENDED 
SCIENCE AND ADVENTURE 



BY 

JOHN YOUNG BROWN, A. B. 



"Heaven's ebon vault 
Studded with stars unutterably bright, 
Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls, 
Seems like a canopy which love has spread 
To curtain her sleeping world' * 

Shellcu's Queen Mah. IV, 



1922 
LUNAR PUBLISHING COMPANY 

PROVIDENCE. KENTUCKY 






COPYRIGHT 1922 

BY 

Htjeam W. Davis and Elliott James. 

all eights b.eserved, including 

film or motion picture 

production, 



§)CU661562 



To 

My Pupils 

Whose Appreciative S^mpath^ 

Has Made of Our Schoolroom Da^s 

a Delightful Experience 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

I — A Glimpse at the Solar System and the 

Stellar Universe 1 

II — Contrast of Former and Present Atti- 
tudes Towards Scientific Achieve- 
ments 5 

III — How the Writer Became a Member of 
THE Party to Go on the Lunar 

Expedition 9 

IV — The Equipment for the Voyage 14 

V — The Equipment for the Voyage (Cent.) 20 

VI — Our Departure for the Moon 26 

VII — The First Day of the Voyage 31 

VIII — The First Day of the Voyage (Cent.) . . 40 

IX — Perils Imaginary and Real 46 

X — Perils Imaginary and Real (Cent.) .... 52 

XI — Perils Imaginary and Real (Cont.) .... 66 

XII — Perplexing Experiences 74 

XIII — Looking Farther Towards Infinity. ... 82 

XIV — The Limit of the Voyage Reached. ... 88 

XV — Our Thanksgiving and Our Battle 

WITH THE Elements 98 



CONTENTS— Continued 

Chapter Page 

XVI — Our Second Venture Out 104 

XVII — How We Employ^ Time Until Sun- 
Rise 109 

XVIII — The Phenomenon of a Lunar Sun-Rise 114 

XIX — To the Apennine Mountains in a 

Biplane 119 

XX — From the Apennine Mountains to 
Plato via Archemides, Pico, and the 
Teneriff Peaks 123 

XXI — From Plato to the Apennine Moun- 
tains VIA Mont Blanc and the 
Alpine Valley 130 

XXII — From Archemides to Copernicus via the 

Apennine Gorges and Eratosthenes. . . 138 

XXIII — From Copernicus to Tycho via Murus 

Rectus, or the ''Straight Wall". . . . 146 

XXIV — From Tycho to Newton via Longomon- 

TANUS AND ClAVIUS 153 

XXV — A Threatened Encounter with Sel- 

enites at Gassendi 159 

XXVI — A Threatened Encounter v/ith Sel- 

ENiTES AT Gassendi (Cont.) 166 

XXVII — From Copernicus to Grimaldi via Kep- 
ler, Aristarchus and Heroditus 173 

XXVIII — From Grimaldi to Petavia via Palus 

Somnii, Langrenus, and Vendelinus. 179 



CONTENTS— Continued 

Chapter Page 

XXIX — Death of Prof. Galvan at Pic-Co-Lom- 

i-Ni 185 

XXX — From Piccolomini to the Hyginus 
Clefts via Catherina, Cyrillus, and 
Theophilus 191 

XXXI — From the Hyginus Clefts to Arche- 
mides via Bessel, Linne and the 
Haemus Mountains 196 

XXXII — Review of Salient Features. 200 

XXXIII — Our Til\ns-Ethereal Flight for Earth 206 

XXXIV — Concluding Summary 210 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Fig. 1 — The Planet Saturn. 

Fig. 2— Halley's Comet, May 29, 1910. 

Fig. 3 — Three Forms of Cometary Orbits. 

Fig. 4 — Projections of a Few Cometary Orbits on the 
Plane of the Ecliptic. 

Fig. 5 — A Meteor Trail. 

Fig. 6 — Star Cloud Near Messier 8. 

Fig. 7 — Capt. Ewald's Mysterious Craft. 

Fig. 8 — Our Departure for the Moon. 

Fig. 9 — A Panoramic View of the Heavens. 

Fig. 10— The Planet Mars, 1909. 

Fig. 11 — The Sun, Photographed w^ith the Spectro- 
heliograph, 1913. 

Fig. 12 — A Solar Prominence. 

Fig. 13 — Solar Prominences Showing Currents in Dif- 
ferent Directions. 

Fig. 14 — Solar Prominences Showing Currents in Dif* 
FERENT Directions. 

Fig. 15 — Solar Prominences Showing Changes. 

Fig. 16 — Giacobini's Comet, 1905. 

Fig. 17 — ^Morehouse Comet. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS— Continued 

Fig. 18 — Star Cluster. 

Fig. 19 — Star Cluster. 

Fig. 20 — Great Nebula in Andromeda. 

Fig. 21 — Great Nebula in Orion. 

Fig. 22 — Trifid Nebula in Sagitarius. 

Fig. 23 — Ring Nebula in Lyra. 

Fig. 24 — Directions on the Plates. 

Fig. 25 — ^Picture Map of the Moon. 

Fig. 26^ — Key Map of Points We Visited. 

Fig. 27 — Moon Five Days Old. 

Fig. 28 — Prof. Galvan Equipped for a Tramp and a 
Climb Among the Mountains. 

Fig. 29 — Star Clouds in Sagitarius. 

Fig. 30 — The Apennine Mountains, Archemides, and 
Surroundings. 

Fig. 31 — ^The Moon Seven Days Old. 

Fig. 32 — The Moon Nine Days Old. 

Fig. 33 — The Lunar Apennines. 

Fig. 34 — An Enlarged View of the Apennine Moun- 
tains, Archemides, and Surroundings. 

Fig. 35 — Part of the Shore of the Mare Imbrium. 

Fig. 36 — Pico, Plato, and the Alpine Valley. 

Fig. 37 — ^An Ideal Sketch of Pico. 

Fig. 38 — Aristoteles, Eudoxus, and Surroundings. 

Fig. 39 — Copernicus and Surroundings. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS— Continued 

Fig. 40 — Copernicus. 

Fig. 41 — Moon^s Age Ten Days. 

Fig. 42 — Mare Nubium and Surroundings. 

Fig. 43 — Aspect of Murus Rectus, or the '^Straight 
Wall," 

Fig. 44 — Enlarged View of the Ray System About 
Tycho. 

Fig. 45 — Tycho, Longomontanus, Clavius, Etc. 

Fig. 46 — Moon's Age Twenty-One Days. 

Fig. 47^ — Gassendi and Surroundings, 

Fig. 48 — Ray Systems About Tycho, Copernicus, Kepler 
and Aristarchus. 

Fig. 49 — Enlarged View of the Ray Systems About 

Copernicus, Kepler and Aristarchus. 
Fig. 50 — Mare Crisium and Neighboring Parts. 

Fig. 51 — A Landscape Yiew of the District Just Out- 
side THE North Wall of Piccolomini. 

Fig. 52 — Crater Region About Theophilus. 
Fig. 53 — The Hyginus Cleft. 

Fig. 54 — The Mare Serenitatis and Surroundings. 

Fig. 55 — The Mare Imbrium and Surroundings. 




Prof. THOMAS NOLAN 
GALYAN 



Capt. HORACE BRYSON 
EWALD 



JOHN YOUNG BRO\YN 




Mr. WARREN NE\yELL Prof. BUR WELL ESTEX 

SHIPLEY RIDER 

Prof. HANSON GOODWIN 
BRUNOR 



PREFACE. 

It is well at times for one to turn his thoughts from 
the strenuity of business, from the fires of ambition, 
and from the horrors of war, to the more quiet fields of 
science. 

For thus freeing the mind occasionally from such ex- 
citing cares with their unwholesome effects, perhaps 
no other branch of study is so well adapted as astron- 
omy, the prosecution of which is, indeed, a fascinating 
pursuit, elevating the mind, ennobling the aspirations, 
and dispelling the distractions of mundane existence. 

The moon, being the nearest to us of all the heavenly 
bodies, has long been the favorite study of astronomers 
who, by training their telescopes upon it, have been 
able to photograph many of its physical features and 
to map the surface of its visible hemisphere, and 
thereby to give us a mass of information in regard to 
the conditions thereon. But this knowledge is prac- 
tically confined to a limited few whose special interest 
in, and easy access to, the facts of astronomy bring 
them at once and directly in touch with such 
information. 

To popularize this branch of knowledge, to make it 
the common possession of all, is the author's object. 
He hopes that in this story, ^^TO THE MOON AND 
BACK IN NINETY DAYS,'' in which he has been care- 
ful to record the exact finding of selenographical re- 
search, he has so incorporated the spirit of adventure 
as to interest the young and to lead them on to the 
study of astronomy in general. 

In conclusion the author expresses his sincere thanks 
to Prof. E. B. Frost, director of the Yerkes Observa- 
tory, who kindly consented for him to use many of the 
plates found in this work ; to Profs. H. W. Davis and 
S. Hicks of Providence, Ky., who carefully read the 
manuscript, offered important corrections, and made 
valuable suggestions for improvement; and to others 
for important aid which they have in various ways 
kindly rendered. 

Providence, Kentucky, JOHN Y. BROWN. 

June 7, 1917. 



PROLOGUE. 

It is not for all of us to realize our fondest hope 
except in the confident assurance of its worthy purpose. 
But faithful labor in the performance of a helpful work 
carries its own reward, and recognition by our fellows 
but confirms the sincerity of our motives. 

So in the death of the author of this book so shortly 
prior to its publication, a life-goal was barely missed, 
and yet he felt a supreme joy in the assurance of his 
grateful fpends and pupils that the manuscript would 
be published. 

The far-reaching influence of the work and character 
of Prof. Brown bears eloquent tribute to his life, and 
this book, dedicated to those Vv^ho loved him so well, 
will be a lasting monument to his mem^ory. Character- 
istic of his m.odest and unassuming manner, he faced 
the end with these words : ''The only memorial I wish 
is a sand stone at the head of my grave and one of my 
books in the home of each of my pupils." 

Then let us take up this volume with fitting rever- 
ence and treasure it as a rare token of loving service 
and unselfish devotion — consistent virtues of an un- 
usual life. 

ONE OF HIS PUPILS. 




DICK PROWTY 



Prof. PURDY WARFORD 
KNOWLTON 



Prof. CHARLES ULRIC 
THORSEN 



Prof. GEORGE HUNDLEY 
PURNELL 
Prof. DANIEL CROWLEY 
MONAHAN 



PUBLISHER'S NOTE. 

The author of this Narrative made no pretentions to 
a literary career. His life work was in the school 
room, teaching young men and young women, in whose 
hearts his sympathy and kindness inspired respect and 
love. 

Many of his pupils are now filling positions of use- 
fulness and honor and attribute their success in no 
small measure to the time spent under his instruction. 
Some, indeed, say they owe all that they are to him. 

It was for his pupils especially that he wrote this 
"Narrative of Blended Science and Adventure,'' and to 
them he dedicated the book. One of his last expressed 
wishes was that his only memorial might be, "a sand 
stone at the head of his grave and one of his books in 
the home of each of his pupils.*' 

This story is different from anything ever written 
on the subject. It is not the result of a wild, unbridled 
imagination, relating things contrary to reason and 
utterly incapable of scientific adjustment as have been 
some books on trips to the moon. On the contrary its 
incidents are so constructed as to seem not only rea- 
sonable but probable and its scientific statements are 
reliable and recent. 

Any one disposed to criticise this work should remem- 
ber that the author died before his book went to the 
press, and did not have the opportunity of reading the 
proof sheets and making such corrections as he might 
have deemed essential. But, with whatever faults it 
may possess, the publishers feel that it will provide 
entertainment and instruction to multitudes of people, 
old as well as young, besides the thousands of his 
former pupils. 

H. W. D. 



CHAPTER I 

A GLIMPSE AT THE SOLAR SYS- 
TEM AND THE STELLAR 
UNIVERSE 

The heavenly bodies are divided into four distinct 
classes — planets, comets, meteors, and fixed stars. 

Planets are dense, opaque bodies, globular in form, 
which shine by reflecting the light of the sun. They 
obey the law of gravitation, revolve around the sun in 
various periods of time, in elliptical paths not differing 
much from the circle, and are periodic in their revolu- 
tions. Their orbits extend east and west around the 
celestial sphere, are almost parallel with one another 
and the ecliptic, and are confined within the limits of 
the zodiac. Of this class of heavenly bodies there are 
believed to be more than one thousand. 

Comets are light, luminous bodies, without perma- 
nent form, which shine by their own light intensified by 
that of the sun. They are divided into three classes 
distinguished from one another according as they re- 
volve in elliptical paths, pursue parabolic curves, or 
move along hyperbolic curves. They obey the law of 
gravitation and revolve around the sun ; and these that 
belong to the first order are periodic in their revolu- 



2 TO THE MOON AND 

tions, while those that belong to the second and third 
groups visit the sun once only, and then launch them- 
selves into the profound depths of space seeking other 
suns which they in turn will, no doubt, abandon as they 
do our own. Comets are very swift in their flight, and 
take on long fiery trains as they approach their peri- 
helion distances. Their orbits are not confined to the 
zodiac, like those of the planets, but extend through 
the heavens in almost every conceivable direction. Of 
this class of heavenly bodies there are, according to the 
most reliable living authorities, no less than seventeen 
million and five hundred thousand within the solar sys- 
tem. 

Meteors are small, dense, luminous bodies and have 
a globular form and a sensible diameter. They fre- 
quently pass over a great extent of country and are 
seen for several seconds. Some leave behind them a 
train of glowing sparks, and others explode with re- 
ports like the discharge of artillery — ^the pieces either 
continuing along their course or falling to the earth as 
meteorites. Before these little wanderers of the sky 
come in contact with the earth and are converted into 
meteors by the resistance offered by the atmosphere, 
they are truly little worlds as hard and as dry as a 
cinder, which, like the earth, obey the law of gravita- 
tion, revolve around the sun in elliptical paths, and are 
periodic in their return. These little planets, whose 
diameters range from a magnitude of perhaps not 
more than one-half inch to that of several feet, and 
whose weights vaiy from a few ounces to several tons, 
are as numerous as the leaves on the trees or as the 
sands of the sea shore. According to the late Pro- 





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FIG. 1. THE PLANET SATURN.' 



Saturn is the only planet, so far as human knowledge extends, 
that is encircled by rings. 

(Yerkes Observatory.) 




FIG. 2. HALLEY^S COMET, MAY 29, 1910. 



The plate was exposed for two hours. The observer kept the 
telescope constantly pointed on the comet, following its course 
among- the stars, which caused the elongation of the star images. 
The tail of the comet, as shown on this plate, was about seven 
million miles long and composed of luminous vapors chiefly 
hydrocarbons. 

(Yerkes Observatory.) 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 3 

f essor Newton the number of these miniature heavenly 
bodies that pierce the earth's atmosphere and are con- 
verted into meteors daily is no less than four hundred 
millon ; yet their number does not seem to be diminish- 
ing in the smallest degree. 



OR errs 




FIG. 3. THREE FORMS OF COMETARY ORBITS. 

(Steele's Astronomy.) 

The fixed stars, like the comets, are self-luminous 
and by far the largest, brightest, and m.ost distant 
from us of all the heavenly bodies. They obey the law 
of gravitation and move very rapidly through the 
heavens, but for the short space of human life they 
appear to be fixed in the concave of the sky. Between 
them and us there is a vast chasm which no imagina- 
tion can bridge — a, distance so immense that figures 



4 TO THE MOON AND 

applied to it are meaningless. The number of this 
class of heavenly bodies is not reasonably limited. 

The solar system, as a whole, is mainly comprised 
within the limits of the zodiac and consists of: 

(1) The sun, which is classed with the fixed stars, 
and which is the center and controlling influence of 
the entire system. 

(2) The major planets — Mercury, Venus, Earth, 
Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. 

(3) The minor planets, of which about eight hun- 
dred are known to astronomical science. 

(4) A class of secondary planets called moons or 
satellites which accompany most of the major primary 
planets on their annual journeys around the sun, and 
which, in the points of position and movement, bear 
the same relation to their respective centers of revolu- 
tion that the primaries themselves bear to their own 
common center of revolution — the sun. The earth is 
one of the major planets, and the moon is its only sat- 
ellite or secondary. 

(5) The comets belonging to the first class, or those 
that move in elliptical paths and revisit the sun 
periodically. 

(6) Meteors and shooting stars. 

(7) The zodiacal light. 



CHAPTER II 

A CONTRAST OF FORMER 

AND PRESENT ATTITUDES 

TOWARDS SCIENTIFIC 

ACHIEVEMENTS 

Astronomers in ail ages have sought to calculate the 
distances of these remote orbs from the sun and from 
one another, their dimensions, their periods of rotation 
and revolution, etc. ; and in spite of the facts that dur- 
ing the respective ages in which they lived the science 
of astronomy was comparatively in its infancy and the 
equipments for performing such tasks were very sim- 
ple, those pioneers of science were able to make esti- 
mates approximately correct. But the full and per- 
fect confidence of the common people, in the ability, the 
accuracy, and the truthfulness of the forerunners in 
scientific speculations has not always existed. And 
even many of the contemporaries of those progressive 
leaders, who were learned men and women engaged at 
high pursuits, and who were almost or quite the intel- 
lectual peers of those earlier astronomers, discredited 
the truths set forth by them in their publications, 
doubted their sincerity, and even censured them for 
indulging in what the world at large then termed folly. 

In some of the more enlightened countries of Europe 



6 TO THE MOON AND 

this general lack of confidence gave rise to severe leg- 
islation against the publishing of any opinion, theory 
or truth relative to the distances, the dimensions, or 
the motions of the heavenly bodies, unless the content 
of such publication was strongly supported by the solid 
foundation of evidence. For offending against said 
law some of the world's greatest thinkers, even in the 
time of Galileo and Copernicus, were arraigned before 
the courts of justice, tried, and condemned. After the 
sentence to punishment had been uttered, the offender 
in such cases was sometimes given the option of re- 
gaining his liberty by swearing on bended knees that 
his publication was willfully and knowingly false, or of 
paying the penalty of violated law, which was either 
long confinement in a dungeon, or death. 

At the present time no such law as the one referred 
to in the foregoing paragraph exists in any of the civ- 
ilized countries on the face of the globe to hamper 
thought and to retard scientific progress. The ab- 
scence of such restrictions from the statute books of 
all countries is the strongest and best evidence that 
the people of every race and nationality are more open 
to conviction than they were in former times and there- 
fore becoming more thoroughly educated, wiser, and 
better. I am truly glad that I live in such an age, — 
an era when the subjects of all countries may freely use 
and enjoy such a privilege as the freedom of speech 
and of the press, at least in all matters pertaining to 
scientific subjects and speculations, without placing 
their lives in jeopardy. 

Before any craft heavier than air was ever propelled 
and guided through the aerial regions above us, the 
Wrights declared that it was a matter of only a short 
time when airships would be more numerous than the 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 7 

ships upon the sea ; and at the time when wireless teleg- 
raphy was talked of by a few merely as a possibility 
and thought of by the masses of the people as nothing 
short of wild speculation, Marconi asserted that within 
the short period of five years we would be receiving 
messages from ten thousand miles away without any 
apparent medium of communication. Before these 
blossoms developed and ripened into fruits all the en- 
lightened countries of both hemispheres were dickering 
for the products. The world did not wait to see the 
undisguised expositions of these three great modem 
geniuses come true, but at once had faith in their 
magic utterances and touch and received their explicit 
assertions without question or criticism. These are 
only two of many examples that might be given to 
illustrate or to prove the unbounded faith and confi- 
dence that the people everywhere now have in the 
pioneers of science and art. 

Most competent authorities are now urging upon us 
the prediction that fifty years hence our means of 
locomotion will be such that we can with perfect com- 
fort and a reasonable degree of safety cross the conti- 
nent from New York City to San Francisco within the 
limits of eight or ten hours. Perhaps no one doubts 
for one moment the possibility nor even the probability 
of such facilities in the way of travel within this com- 
paratively short time. During the last half century 
such immense strides have been made in the sciences 
and the arts that now scarcely anything seems un- 
reasonable to the higher grades of intelligence. 

And now if the most progressive men and women of 
the age, and the ablest scholars and the profoundest 
thinkers found today among scientists and inventive 
geniuses of the highest order were to dare assert that 



8 TO THE MOON AND 

it is not only possible but very highly probable that 
within a comparatively short time a means will be in- 
vented by which we can make safe and rapid transits 
from one heavenly body to another, would you not 
look forward to such an accomplishment with expectant 
attention and a high degree of unwavering faith ? Why 
certainly you would. To do otherwise would be to get 
entirely out of harmony with the general upward trend 
of thought which characterizes the people of this, the 
most progressive age in the world's history. 

Now without the slightest fear of placing his life in 
jeopardy, and in the confident hope and the belief that 
the truth of his story will readily be accepted by every 
grade of intelligence and with the same high degree of 
confidence with which they now receive the theories, 
the predictions, and the assertions of the progressive 
leaders along every line of thought, the writer takes 
pleasure in publishing to the world for the first time 
the startling fact that an ethereal ship has already 
been invented and constructed, which has the wonder- 
ful power of neutralizing the force of gravitation and 
of propelling itself at a high rate of speed through the 
free space of the heavens. And he takes pleasure in 
stating further that it has been his pleasure and for- 
tune to have been a member of the first and only party 
to make in this craft a transit from the earth to the 
moon and a safe and speedy return. 



CHAPTER III 

HOW THE WRITER BECAME A 

MEMBER OF THE PARTY TO GO 

ON THE LUNAR EXPEDITION 

It was by mere accident that I became a member of 
the party to go on this perilous voyage. It came about 
thus : 

I was on my way to Urbana, 111., and was waiting in 
the union depot at Terre Haute, Ind., for my train. I 
was sitting almost alone in the south wing of the wait- 
ing room, when a well-dressed, versatile, but unassum- 
ing man apparently about forty years of age ap- 
proached me and introduced himself as Ewald. 

"When is the fast train bound for St. Louis, Mo., due 
to leave Terre Haute?'' inquired he. 

"I do not know,'' I replied. '1 am a stranger here, 
and not familiar with the time table." 

He then voluntarily informed me that he was directly 
from Westchester, Pa., had failed to make the proper 
railroad connections, and was due in St. Louis on urgent 
and important business. He then walked hurriedly 
away in the direction of the bureau of information. 

After the lapse of about five minutes this busy man 
returned, took a seat, and handed me a large, clean 
sheet of high-grade, heavy paper bearing a photo-en- 



10 TO THE MOON AND 

graving of a strange-looking craft of which he claimed 
to be the inventor. As I extended my arm to take it 
from his hand he said: 

''This is an exact representation of an ethereal ship 
which is soon to make a safe and rapid transit from the 
earth to the moon and to carry fifteen passengers/' 

For some time this enthusiastic man talked steadily 
and fluently about his ship of which he was to be cap- 
tain on the proposed voyage, while I gave him re- 
spectful attention. Pretty soon I arrived at the con- 
clusion that he was of unsound mind; and for this 
reason I asked no further questions, and for the time 
being the conversation directly beween him and me 
ceased. 

Captain Ewald, as some of his newly-made acquaint- 
ances had already begun to call him, in derision per- 
haps, next engaged the attention of two or three 
well-dressed bj'^-standers by exploiting his great inven- 
tion and by his strong and spirited argument in favor 
of its merits. 

After the lapse of some thirty minutes I again en- 
gaged him in a conversation. 

"Captain, by what means do you expect to overcome 
the attraction of the earth and to continue your voy- 
age,'' I asked, "when your ship ascends to the limit of 
the earth's atmosphere where there is absolutely noth- 
ing to offer it resistance?" 

"The merits of my ship," replied he without a mo- 
ment's hesitation, ''lie principally in two things, 
namely, its power to neutralize or to destroy the force 
of gravitation so that neither the attraction of the 
earth nor that of any other heavenly body can possibly 
exert any influence upon it, and the power to propel 
itself through the free space of the heavens at the 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 11 

terrific speed of three hundred and sixty miles an hour, 
or almost six times as fast as the swiftest express 
train/' 

I treated his assertion as a joke. That any contriv- 
ance could possess such merits as he claimed for the 
running gear of his ship appeared to me at that time 
to be utterly absurd, or as incredible as the possibility 
of perpetual motion; yet, the high degree of intelli- 
gence the inventor seemed to possess, his unbounded 
self-confidence, and his earnest demeanor, all consid- 
ered together, gave me at least a little faith in him 
and his enterprise. 

Just as the captain uttered the last word of his state- 
ment in reference to the merits of his ship, the express 
train destined for St. Louis arrived. By that time I 
was beginning to take a truly lively interest in my 
newly-made acquaintance and his project. 

As we walked on together in the direction of the 
train, he introduced me to Messrs. Vanderlip and Waite, 
two of his young friends who were traveling with him, 
and told me briefly and hastily that the ship was com- 
plete in every particular, and that the departure for 
the moon would be taken the following week from some 
point near St, Louis. He stated further that the ship 
had been constructed strictly according to his own 
specifications and directly under his own observation, 
by skilled workmen under secrecy, and charged me 
particularly to make no mention of the proposed voyage 
in connection with his name. 

He then informed me that the two young men who 
were with him had linked their destiny with that of 
his ship and would make the voyage with him, and 
told me that if I wished to do likewise he would, as 
early as possible, consider my general fitness for such 



12 TO THE MOON AND 

a venture. I then asked the privilege to become a 
member of the party to go on the Lunar Expedition, 
and in due time it was granted. This meeting occurred 
on Friday, November 13, 1914. 

On the following Thursday in a suburb of Alton, 111., 
Capt. Ewald, according to a previous arrangement, 
organized the company to go on this expedition and 
demonstrated to the entire satisfaction of its members 
that his means of conveyance possessed all the merits 
he claimed for it. 

The individual members of this company, who dared 
unite the»: destiny with that of the ship were as 
follows : 

Captain Horace Bryson Ewald of Brockton, Mass., 
inventor of the mysterious running gear of the ship 
which carried us; Prof. Burv^^ell Esten Rider of La 
Crosse, Wis., who assisted the inventor in steering the 
craft; Prof. Charles Ulric Thorsen of Gothenburg, 
Sweden, and Prof. Purdy Warf ord Knowlton of Birm- 
ingham, Ala., aviators while touring the moon; Prof. 
Daniel Crowley Monahan and Thomas Nolan Galvan, 
mathematicians and scientists of more than ordinary 
ability, late from the University of Dublin, Ireland, 
who made the voyage with the view to adding some- 
thing to science ; Dr. Marion Dade Wharton of Atlanta, 
Ga., our physician, who formerly held the chair of 
Materia Medica and Therapeutics in the Medical De- 
partment of Tulane University, New Orleans, La. ; Prof. 
Hanson Goodwin Brunor of St. Louis, Mo., foreman in 
the heavy construction work of the sitting room and 
the dome of the ship; Prof. George Hundley Pumell 
of Philadelphia, Pa., machinist and electrician, who in- 
stalled the air compressors, the storage batteries, and 
the running gear of the ship ; Messrs. Walter Hummel 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 13 

Vanderlip and Frank Gilman Waite of Brooklyn, N. Y., 
photographers, and old acquaintances and friends of 
Capt. Ewald ; the Pwev. Biyan Collis Merritt of Lincoln, 
Nebr., a student of theology and a nephew of Dr. Whar- 
ton; Mr. V/arren Newell Shipley of Brownville, Tex., 
Capt. Ewald's private secretarj^; Dick Prouty, a typi- 
cal North Carolina colored man of Bellville, 111., who 
was cook during the voyage and chauffeur while tour- 
ing the moon ; and the writer, who vrent along merely 
to be an assistant in all light and simple matters and 
to see the sights. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE EQUIPMENT FOR THE 
VOYAGE 

The equipment for the voyage consisted, for the 
most part, of the following: 

1. The ship that bore us away to a foreign world 
and in due time transported us back to earth again and 
landed us safe at home. This craft together with its 
propelling machinery and other necessary installments 
was not only a strange-looking and complicated piece 
of mechanism, but a thijig of magnitude, strength, and 
beauty, as well. 

(a) This most mysterious of all conveyances, which 
by its ix)wer to neutralize the force of gravitation and 
to propel itself rapidly through space without a resist- 
ing medium has placed us in close touch and direct 
communication with other worlds than ours, was pri- 
marily divided into a sitting room and an air dome. 
In shape the sitting room was that of a right octagonal 
prism and contained in round numbers, one hundred 
and fifty-five thousand cubic feet of breathing space. 
The dome resembled an egg slightly flattened on the 
sides and placed on end with the point directly upward 
and had a volume of eight hundred and sixty thousand 
cubic feet. In other words, this ship had a floor whose 

14 




FIG. 4. PROJECTIONS OF A FEW COMETARY ORBITS 
ON THE PLANE OF THE ECLIPTIC. 

(Steele's Astronomy.) 




FIG. 5. A METEOR TRAIL. 

(Yerkes Observatory.) 




FIG. 6. STAR CLOUD NEAR MESSIER 



Under most favorable atmospheric conditions less than a dozen 
stars on this plate can be seen from the earth's surface with the 
naked eye. 

( Yei'kes Observatory. ) 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 15 

perimeter was two hundred and thirty feet, and a dome 
with a circumference of three hundred and forty-six 
feet; and, when placed in an upright position or sitting 
posture, it stood two hundred and thirty-four feet in 
the air. 

(b) The sitting room contained six observatioii win- 
dows each of which consisted of a perfectly transparent 
pane of glass two by three feet and ten inches thick,, 
which were strengthened by a wide border of thick 
steel plate and closely fitted into the opening's by means 
of broad, deep, rnetal-lined grooves. It was estimated 
that these panes were capable of safely resisting fif- 
teen thousand pounds of atmospheric pressure at the 
level of the sea. A rostrum twelve feet wide and four- 
teen inches high bordered by a balustrade of heavy 
nickel-plated wire Vvith four-inch meshes extended en- 
tirely around the room, 

(c) The dome v/as divided by partitions into six 
apartments for carrying compressed air, all of which 
commuiucated directly with the sitting room but not 
with one another. The separating of the dome into 
several cham.bers v/as a precaution against losing all 
of the pent-up air, during our transits, in the event of 
a puncture by flying meteoric stones. 

(d) A steel pipe or barrel ten inches in diameter 
and with an eight-inch bore extended from one of the 
chambers in the dome directly downward through the 
sitting room. All objects to be cast out v/ere dis- 
charged through this pipe. A circular door supported 
by a strong hinge opened into the pipe from the sit- 
ting room. Through this opening into the pipe the 
object to be thrown overboard was passed, after which 
the door was closed and fastened by means of a strong, 
close-fitting, steel band, and then compressed air was 



16 TO THE MOON AND 

turned on from the dome. In this way any object not 
too large could easily and quickly be expelled either 
gently or with great force. 

(e) The floor, the walls, and the partitions of both 
the sitting room and the dome were very thick and 
strong and consisted, for the most part, of alternate 
layers of thick, heavy paper, large sheets of hard wood 
and of steel plate five-eighths inches thick thoroughly 
coated over with pitch and drawn closely together by 
means of strong steel bolts and nuts. 

(f ) The whole of the exterior of the ship was coated 
with thick, highly-polished plates of aluminum, which 
at a distance gave it a pale-blue, translucent appear- 
ance; and when fully exposed to the bright light of the 
sun, this stupendous craft glistened like an iceberg. 

(g) The curved surface of the dome and the hard 
material of which . the walls and the partitions were 
constructed, together with the manner in which they 
were built and braced, made them absolutely air-tight 
and capable of resisting almost any degree of atmos- 
pheric pressure from within and gave at least a par- 
tial guarantee against punctures by flying missiles 
from without. The entire cost of both the material and 
the construction was approximately two and a half 
millions of dollars. 

(h) Seven huge compressors were installed — one in 
each apartment — and thus became practically a part 
of the ship. These condensors were mainly for the pur- 
pose of compressing air into the chambers of the ship 
in the event it was found that the atmosphere sur- 
rounding the moon was too highly rarefied, in its nat- 
ural state, for breathing purposes. 

(i) Three large Edison storage batteries of the sub- 
marine-boat type also were installed, and like the com- 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 17 

pressors, became practically an essential part of the 
craft. These batteries furnished heat for the physical 
comfort of the passengers and the crew and for light- 
ing and cooking purposes, and kept the pent-up air in 
a wholesome state for breathing. The potash solution 
with which this particular type of battery is charged 
absorbs carbon-dioxide, while an appliance for generat- 
ing oxygen completes the system of air-purification and 
rejuvenation. There was sufl^icient potash in the three 
batteries installed to absorb all the carbon-dioxide ex- 
pelled by the persons on board the ship in a period of 
twelve months. Mr. Edison had practically completed 
this type of battery by the close of the year 1912, and 
it was this that made voyages to other worlds possible 
and led Capt. Ewald to lend his intellectual energy to 
inventing the mysterious running gear of his ship. Be- 
fore the installation of these batteres they were sub- 
jected to the most drastic tests to prove their fitness 
for the important service which they were to render. 

2. Fifteen couches — one for each member of our 
party — and an abundance of heavy, comfortable bed- 
ding. 

3. Fifteen suits of clothing made of high-grade, 
heavy m.a,terial, and m_uch after the pattern and kind 
usually worn by arctic explorers. 

4. Approximately one million cubic feet of air indi- 
cating a barometric pressure of sixty pounds to the 
square inch, and a sufficient quantity of plain but 
wholesome and nourishing food for the entire party for 
a period of twelve months, including six thousand gal- 
lons of water, a coop of five dozen chickens, six pigeons, 
and a gander. 

5. Five dozen closed, copper helmets which, while we 
were touring the moon, rendered a service without 



18 TO THE MOON AND 

price. A more minute description of this helmet and 
how it was equipped v/ill be given in a subsequent 
chapter. 

6. One thousand feet of half -inch hemp rope, two 
and a half dozen pairs of heavy gloves, and forty-five 
pairs of climbing shoes. 

7. Fifteen heavy reclining chairs with cushion bot- 
toms, fifteen small legless tables which folded beneath 
the arms of the chairs, and two cooking stoves. 

8. A Ford car, a Wright biplane of mammoth propor- 
tions, and a goodly supply of gasoline and storage bat- 
teries. These machines were taken along in the con- 
fident hope and belief that the surface conditions on the 
moon would be reasonably favorable to our making in 
them interesting and profitable, short, side-trips from 
our stops along, while touring our neighboring little 
world. These means of conveyance were selected from 
among other makes on account of the genuine service 
which they render in the way of speed and endurance 
due largely to the high-grade material of which they 
are built and the excellency of workmanship put into 
them. 

9. One twelve-inch, clear-aperture, telescope and 
some spectroscopic attachments obtained from the Yer- 
kes Observatory at Williams Bay, Wis., and one dozen 
small high-pov/er telescopes. 

10. A theodolite with armillary-sphere attachments, 
a cabinet of drawing and plotting instruments, and a 
ream of paper. 

11. A dozen thermometers and as many barometers, 
a supply of chemical apparatus including blow-pipes, 
spirit-lam.ps, retorts, etc., and a supply of chemicals. 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 19 

12. A typewriter, one and a half dozen ear trumpets, 
seven clocks and nine watches, and a photographer s 
complete outfit. 

13. One spade with a long narrow steel blade, one 
common chopping ax, three rock picks, two sledge ham- 
mers, one drill, and a supply of fuse, pov/der, and dyna- 
mite. 

14. A supply of tacks, screws, and small bolts and 
nuts ; a hundred-pound coil of No. 14 wire ; two or three 
armloads of light, hard, finishing lumber; three bolts 
of strong, high-grade ducking, and a half dozen buck- 
ets of black paint and three paint brushes. 

15. One small chest of handy and useful little tools, 
such as gimlets, hammers, scissors, screw drivers, wire 
pliers, etc. 



CHAPTER V 

THE EQUIPMENT FOR THE 
VOY AGE— ( Continued ) 

Recently, while relating to a lady friend some parts 
of this story, I had occasion to enumerate in a kind of 
general way the articles that made up the bulk of our 
equipment. 

"In the name of truth/' exclaimed she, with a look 
of intense surprise, '*how did you manage to pack so 
much junk into so small a space?" 

"Now, Miss M , if it appears to you to be incon- 
sistent with reason that so much could be packed into 
so small a space,'' I replied, ''please get and keep in 
mind three things : first, that the ship was not by any 
means a mere toy ; secondly, that the way in which a 
great many of the bulky articles of equipment were 
turned to ready use prevented our having to pack them 
away in receptacles; and thirdly, that the manner in 
which nearly all the food supplies were prepared for 
packing called for less room than otherwise would have 
been required/' 

"I v/ant you to tell me," demanded the young lady 
impatiently, "where you placed all these things. I can 
not understand how you had room to move about." 

"Just beneath the floor of the sitting room, which 
was twelve feet above the ground, and extending en- 

20 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 21 

tirely around the craft/' responded I, "was a line of 
cargo chests prepared especially for packing away 
stores of every kind necessary/' 

"Where did you place the huge compressors, the 
cooking stoves, and the beds?" she inquired. "I should 
not think," she added, "that you stored them av/ay with 
the rest of the things in the receptacles." 

''The air compressors, the large storage batteries, 
and the cooking stoves were installed in out-of-the-way 
places," answered I, "and were ready for immediate use 
when the need demanded it. The couches on which we 
slept were securely fastened to the walls, and when not 
in use, folded back with the bedding out of the way and 
out of sight like the upper bunks in a Pullman palace 
car.'* 

"And the mammoth Wright biplane which you say 
was sixty-five feet from tip to tip of the wings — how 
did you pass it in at the door," she asked, "and where 
did you find room for it after you got it on the inside?" 

'The biplane and the car were separated completely 
into their component parts," I explained, "and together 
with the food supplies, gasoline, etc., stored away in 
compact bulks in the chests. In short, not an article 
of equipment was visible in the sitting room, except 
the fifteen large chairs, the table on which sat the type- 
writer, and the large telescope and its mountings." 

"It appears to me," said she, "that your food sup- 
plies would have taken up an immense amount of 
space." 

"Profs. Monahan and Galvan, two eminent scientists 
and very prominent members of our party," replied I, 
"thought that possibly we might be surrounded, at 
least much of the time during the voyage, by physical 
conditions favorable to the decomposition of our food 



52 TO THE MOON AND 

supplies. For this reason, they advised and directed 
that our commissary stores, and especially the milk, 
the eggs, the meat, the fruits, and the vegetables, be 
conserved by some process of drying and powdering; 
and their orders were carried out, which greatly re- 
duced the bulk and the w^eight of this class of supplies." 

"By what means," then inquired she, ''did you pre- 
serve your store of provisions ?" 

''The machine used for this purpose," I said in reply, 
"is a comparatively recent invention of Mr. G. A. 
Krause, an engineer of Munich, Germany, By the ap- 
plication of a centrifugal force, rather than by that of 
heat„ this combination of mechanical powers quickly 
and absolutely extracts the last vestige of moisture in 
a few seconds, from any and all kinds of foodstuffs, 
without removing any of the valuable ingredients. A 
gallon of milk placed in the machine and rapidly re- 
volved, was quickly transformed, right before our eyes, 
to a whitish, vapor-like powder. This was the first test 
of the machine's work that came directly under my ob- 
servation. Unlike milk which has been reduced to pow- 
der by the application of heat, the fluid treated in this 
centrifugal-motion machine loses none of its nutritive 
value, and w^hen this powder is mixed with the proper 
proportion of water, an hour or even a year later, it be- 
comes real, pure milk again, and tastes exactly like the 
original. It contains, as chemical analysis shows, ev- 
ery one of the characteristics and properties of milk, 
and produces a thick rich cream— providing the orig- 
inal did — from w^hich butter may be churned." 

"Well, v/hat kind of a looking piece of mechanism is 
this v/onderful machine," inquired she, "and how is it 
operated?" 




FIG. 7. CAPT. EWALD'S MYSTERIOUS CRAFT. 



The ship that bore us away to a foreign world and in due 
time transported us back to earth again and landed us safe at 
home. 



>tf 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 23 

"This machine is cylindrical in shape, and about six 
feet in diameter and twelve feet long," I responded, 
"and resembles a huge wooden boiler stood on end. It 
is operated by electricity, and since no movement is 
visible, when the motor is turned on, and the drying 
process is astonishingly rapid, the mysterious trans- 
fonnation of any and all kinds of edibles before one's 
eyes is almost uncanny." 

"Explain, if you please," she insisted, "the process 
by which the transformation of food takes place in the 
machine." 

*'Two days of the week before our departure for the 
moon," said I in response, "Mr. Oliver B. McGuire, a 
representative of Mr. Krause, operated this machine at 
Alton, 111., in preparing our stores for packing. During 
these two days this representative revealed to the sci- 
entific men of our party and to a representative of a 
large canning factory of Kansas City, Kans., the exact 
process by v/hich the transformation takes place, and 
the mxachine was open to inspection by anybody and ev- 
erybody, but I failed to take sufncient interest in it to 
understand the workings of it. Perhaps my lack of in- 
terest," I concluded humorously, "was due largely to 
the fact that my mind was at that particular time en- 
gaged with bigger thoughts — so elated over the antici- 
pated grand explorations of the heavens and of other 
worlds than ours, that the study of a food-drying ma- 
chine appeared rather tame." 

"I v/ould not have t^^len any chances like that," she 
said emphatically, ''for I would have been afraid we 
could not have changed that powdered-up stuff back to 
wholesome food again." 

"On the day Mr. McGuire finished the work of prepar- 
ing our food for packing," I explained, "he extended to 



24 TO THE MOON AND 

all of us and to a few others an invitation to dine with 
him. He poured a quantity of milk into the machine and 
within a few minutes dried it and ground it to powder. 
He then repeated the process in succession with eggs, 
fruit, potatoes, meats, etc., and all in turn were com- 
pletely and quickly dried and reduced to dust. The vari- 
ous powders were then gathered up and taken to a 
kitchen there in Alton to test the efficiency of the work 
done by Mr. Krause's machine. With the guests still 
watching, amazed and almost incredulous, Mr. McGuire 
added water to the powdered milk in the right propor- 
tion. The pow^dered eggs he put into a large frying 
pan, added water and butter, and in a very short time 
had a tasty and attractive dish of scrambled eggs. The 
fruits he transformed into a sort of marmalade, and 
the potatoes, meats, etc., he served still in other ways. 
Then we all sat down to lunch. After the meal had 
been served, Capt. Ewald stated to a newspaper corre- 
spondent, in behalf of all who partook of this meal, that 
each and every dish prepared from the dried and pow- 
dered products tasted absolutely like the original foods 
and that no flavor had been lost. So you see we took 
no risk at least along this line." 

"What then did you do with all these dried and pow- 
dered products?" she inquired. 

''All our food supplies thus prepared — a quantity suf- 
ficient to last our exploring party for a period of twelve 
months— were then closely packed in strong, neat, pa- 
per boxes prepared especially for that purpose," I said 
in reply, ''and stored away in a dry place for safe keep- 
ing until we were ready to take our departure." 

"Did you really go on a trip to the moon, or are you 
merely joking?" inquired she earnestly. 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 25 

"You had as well doubt the voyages of Sinbad the 
Sailor, the travels of Baron Munchausen, the adven- 
tures of Gulliver, or the simple life of Robinson Cru- 
soe," I replied. 

*'Now I want you to leave off idle talk," she urged, 
"and tell me the truth." 

"Please curb your curiosity on this point until I have 
finished the story," said I, "and then I think that in- 
stead of doubting, you will only wish you had been one 
of the party who went on this wonderful expedition." 



CHAPTER VI 

OUR DEPARTURE FOR THE MOON 

Very early on the morning of November 22, 1914, 
the day of our departure, all the members of our party, 
at the command of Capt. Ewald, convened at the resi- 
dence of Mark P. Hoover, a prosperous farmer living 
in the vicinity of the place where our ship was moored, 
to hold the last consultation in regard to the equipment 
for the long and perilous voyage. 

After we had been gathered about three hours an 
intelligent-looking, comfortably-dressed young man in 
working attire presented himself at the door of the 
room which we were occupying and informed Capt. 
Ewald that all the supplies had been packed and loaded 
on according to directions. The meeting at once ad- 
journed, and as we all walked on in the direction of the 
ship, Capt. Ewald instructed us to keep our real inten- 
tion strictly a secret and to convey to all persons not in 
any way directly concerned the idea that we only ex- 
pected to take a record-breaking air flight. 

When we reached the ship, we found it closely 
guarded and protected by a strong force on the inside 
of barrier ropes and surrounded on the outside by a 
great throng of noisy men and boys. This rough crowd 
had gathered, no doubt, to witness a great calamity; 
but they were evidently very much disappointed, for 

26 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 27 

everything worked out that morning in our favor in 
the minutest detail, and the beginning of the -flight 
was, in every way, a most prosperous one. 

The point from which we made the ascent was a 
small, rocky eminence in a little meadow on the farm 
of Perry G. Lowman, situated on the right bank of the 
Missouri river, and about eight miles above its mouth. 

Exactly at 10 o'clock A. M., central time, we were 
commanded to go on board, w^hich orders we promptly 
obeyed. Then the moorings were cut and the massive 
door closed, locked, and sealed. 

The promoters of this enterprise took their positions 
at the running gear, and the rest of the party, for rea- 
sons which they could never thereafter satisfactorily 
give, quickly gathered themselves into a compact squad 
at the center of the sitting room and stood with bated 
breath waiting for the results of the first attempt to 
rise into the air. Then Capt. Ewald, acting in the triple 
capacity of engineer, pilot, and captain, pulled a lever 
and briskly turned the steering wheel. At once the 
great bleb-shaped craft began to quake all over as if it 
had a violent convulsion, gave a long, loud, doleful 
moan, and leaped wildly from its ponderous founda- 
tion and started upward. At first it moved slowly with 
a few slight jerks, and then with the swiftness of a sky- 
rocket rose steadily to a great altitude and floated 
gently away through the aerial regions in the direction 
of Hillsboro, 111. 

As our ship sped upward, I heard faint shouts from 
the excited crowd below, and the individual members 
of this boisterous assemblage rapidly took on Lillipu- 
tian dimensions and finally disappeared in the distance. 
Countless villages and small towns scattered about over 
Eastern Missouri and Western Illinois almost suddenly 



28 TO THE MOON AND 

popped into view, and the woodlands everywhere took 
on the appearance of great briar fields. 

The morning was almost perfectly clear, and the day 
being the Sabbath, there was practically no smoke in 
the towns and the cities, conditions highly favorable 
for getting fine landscape views. From our elevated 
position the City of St. Louis more than twenty miles 
away was in plain view and rapidly shrank away to a 
mere toy city as our ship steadily drifted away to the 
East. In about one hour after our ascent this great 
inland trade-center had narrowed down until the sky- 
scrapers resembled box-cars standing on end, and to- 
gether with the adjacent towns and villages, disap- 
peared in a southwesterly direction. 

At 11 o'clock — just one hour after we begun our 
flight — ^the thermometer recorded the temperature on 
the outside at 6 degrees Centigrade, above 0, and the 
barograph registered our altitude at twenty-two thou- 
sand seven hundred and sixty feet, or about four and 
one-third miles. The exact latitude and longitude of 
our ship just at this particular time I did not know; 
but, to the best of my knowledge, we were about ninety 
miles almost due west of Evansville, Ind. 

The sky had by this time become somewhat murky, 
and for this reason I was not able to get very sharp 
outlines of sm.all objects on the earth's surface; but all 
large objects, such as farmhouses, stock barns, etc., 
even within a radius of forty miles, loomed up well in 
all their coarser details. I was able also to trace with 
my unaided eyes for quite a long way the courses of a 
number of small streams and two railroad lines, and to 
locate readily at least two dozen small towns and vil- 
lages scattered here and there over the country. From 
my viewpoint these more directly underneath the ship 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 29 

appeared as clusters of large boxes, more than anything 
else, while those more remote resembled scattered flocks 
of geese. 

While some seven or eight of us were temporarily- 
engaged at discerning, naming, and locating objects on 
the earth's surface and exchanging ideas in undertones 
and whispers as to what we thought would be the out- 
come or end of our reckless venture, Capt. Ewald who 
had for some time been aside in consultation with Prof. 
Rider stepped quickly forward, commanded attention, 
and said : ''Gentlemen, we are now ready to leave the 
world, and you may at once prepare for the longest, and 
fastest, continuous ride that you can ever reasonably 
hope to take in this life.'' 

We all promptly took standing positions and clung to 
some nickel-plated rods that extended from the center 
of the floor to the ceiling. Capt. Ewald and Prof. Rider 
immediately took positions at the helm, and with the 
expressions of the intermingled feelings of dread, hope, 
and defiance, began a rapid, skillful, and harmonious 
manipulation of a complicated system of wheels and 
levers. In another moment the giant craft hummed 
aloud and for several minutes rocked slowly round and 
round in the manner of a spinning top, and I felt a 
sensation as of a great weight pulling down upon my 
shoulders. Presently the sky began to turn black, a 
gloaming darkness gathered about us, and objects on 
the earth's surface began to grow indistinct. Just at 
this moment I heard a locomotive whistling and a large 
bell tolling, away in the distance, but I could not locate 
them. These were the last sounds I heard on earth 
until we returned from the moon. 

In about thirty minutes, after having traveled di- 
rectly upward a distance of about one hundred and 



30 TO THE MOON AND 

seventy-five miles, we discovered that there was no at- 
mosphere about us ; or, if there was, it was so highly 
rarefied that it was not discernible by means of the 
most delicate and accurate instruments prepared espe- 
cially for determining such conditions. 

Here we ''cast anchor'' for thirty minutes. While 
our ship floated lazily and quietly about in the free 
space of the heavens, Capt. Ewald and Profs. Monahan, 
Purnell, and Rider were aside from the rest of the party 
holding a spirited consultation and studying the direc- 
tions. At the end of this short period the sun was di- 
rectly over our meridian, and the moon was plainly vis- 
ible at a point in the heavens 65 degrees east of the 
sun, and was just five days on the journey from new 
moon to first quarter. 




FIG. 8. OUR DEPARTURE FOR THE MOON. 

At first it moved slowly with a few slight jerks, and then with 
the swiftness of a sky-rocket rose steadily to a great altitude and 
floated gentlv awav through the aerial regions, in the direction 
of Hillsboro, Til. 




FIG. 9. A PANORAMIC VIEW OF THE HEAVENS. 

This picture gives the reader a faint idea of the view that 
presented itself to us when we were at a distance of two hundred 
miles from the earth's surface and aids him in realizing what the 
mind can not grasp — the immensity of the universe and the im- 
measurable distances in trackless space. 

If we had a means by which we could travel uniformly a mile 
a minute, day and night, and were to speed our course in the 
direction of the remotest planet known to astronomical science, 
it would require five thousand and fifty-five years to reach the end 
of the route. Traveling at this same speed it would require 
forty million years to reach the nearest fixed star. 




FIG. 10. THE PLANET MARS, 1909. 

( Yerkes Observatory. ) 




FIG. 11. THE SUN, PHOTOGRAPHED WITH THE 
SPECTROHELIOGRAPH, 1913. 

The white blotches are areas of intensely brilliant calcium 
vapor, which would be invisible on an ordinary photograph. 

(Yerkes Observatory.) 



CHAPTER Vn 

THE FIRST DAY OF THE VOYAGE 

Just at this moment, 12 o'clock noon, on the day of 
our departure, Capt. Ewald resisted the ship's eastward 
motion due to the earth's rotation until it was com- 
pletely overcome, and then the sun ceased his westward 
flight across the sky and the earth went spinning upon 
her axis. He then chose the direction of a star with 
which the moon was at that moment almost in direct 
line, guaged the ship to this course, and turned on the 
power. On our craft went day after day through the 
boundless and dread immensity of space at a speed 
that must have been equivalent to that of a cannon 
ball. He held steadily to and bore down upon this 
course for a period of a little more than twenty-nine 
days, and in the meantimxe covered a distance of almost 
two hundred and forty thousand miles. 

After the final start, or our departure proper, even 
though we were in every way well and thoroughly 
equipped, I truly regretted that I had ventured to take 
this trans-ethereal flight, because I thought then that 
I realized it was not possible for us to get by the dan- 
gers that would beset us on every hand. The ship had 
the tremors and was running in a somewhat jerky 
manner. Capt. Ewald and Prof. Pumell were at the 
running gear trying to adjust properly some of the 

31 



32 TO THE MOON AND 

machinery that did not seem to be working fitly. Prof. 
Rider, who was the only man in the company other 
than the captain, who could steer the ship, was stand- 
ing quietly near the center of the sitting room and 
looking anxiously toward the helm. The rest of the 
company were seated in the chairs looking wonderingly 
about at one another. I do not know what others 
thought nor how they felt ; but, as for myself, I enter- 
tained the fear that Capt. Ewald and Prof. Rider did 
not feel themselves masters of the situation. I tried 
to discern in their actions and in the expressions of 
their faces a sufficient amount of self-confidence to allay 
within me the painful emotion of fear excited by the 
apprehension of impending danger. 

Presently the ship righted itself and sped smoothly 
onward. Everybody appeared greatly relieved, and 
there opened up at once an all-round conversation. 
Capt. Ewald left the helm, walked straightway to Prof. 
Rider, and with a broad and pleasing smile on his face 
spoke as follows : 

"We are now gone ; there will be no stopping along 
the way to let off and to take on passengers ; the next 
landing will be the moon.'* 

Prof. Rider returned the smile, and in reply said : 
"And high she shoots through glorious light. 
Above all low delay, . 
Where nothing earthly bounds her flight, 
Nor shadows dim her way." 

Immediately after the ship had been set free from 
the earth's rotary motion and the excitement had par- 
tially subsided, I prostrated myself upon the floor to 
peer through one of a number of rectangular panes of 
glass which had been placed in the floor and arranged 
so as to form a decagon around a central, upright shaft. 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 33 

to get a view of the earth. I shall never forget the im- 
pression this scene made upon me. I saw the earth's 
surface plainly — even more so than when we were 
within her atmosphere; and by the aid of one of the 
small telescopes I saw distinctly all the beautiful silvery 
streams of the great Mississippi system threading 
their courses through the country and readily discerned 
the relief in the elevations of every character, and by 
them easily followed with my eyes the trend of the 
ranges of hills. I had also a fine sun^ey of most of the 
Great Lakes and an excellent view of all the large cities 
within a radius of five hundred miles, including St. 
Paul, Minn.; Lincoln, Nebr. ; Little Rock, Ark.; Bir- 
mingham, Ala.; Atlanta, Ga.; Columbia, S. C., and 
Pittsburg, Pa. 

But it was not the mere fact that I could see the 
familiar objects enumerated above, at distances so im- 
mense, that interested me most ; rather, it was the sub- 
limity of the scene that startled me. Although we 
were moving onward at the almost incredible speed of 
three hundred and sixty miles an hour, our ship seemed 
to be standing perfectly still in free space and the earth 
appeared to be falling from under us as if destined for 
some great and pow^erful center of attraction, or even 
for the uttermost bounds of space; but this was an 
optical illusion — it was the craft that was moving. I 
could plainly see the earth, a great, hazy, murky mass, 
going on her rapid heavy swing upon her axis. The 
first impression made upon me was that the law of 
universal gravitation had failed and that as a result 
the universe was wrecking or going into disorder. 

For perhaps fifteen minutes after the final start the 
ship had been running steadily, when we all slowly and 
cautiously distributed ourselves around the walls of the 



34 TO THE MOON AND 

sitting room and for the first time gazed with unob- 
structed view and profound interest through the panes 
into the infinite realm of God's dominion. Not a smile 
played over any one's lips, scarcely a word was spoken 
for more than an hour, and I saw clearly depicted in 
every countenance an expression of the intermingled 
feelings of fear, awe, and reverence. 

The last vestige of my fears occasioned by the perils 
of the situation departed as I stood gazing into the 
trackless and shoreless ocean of space at the sublime 
and awful beauty that from every direction in which I 
turned my eyes met my anxious gaze. This general 
view of the heavens was the most appalling and sub- 
lime spectacle that I ever beheld or ever expect to be- 
hold this side the Judgment Day. No human language 
as a vehicle for thought is competent even to begin to 
approach a description of a thing on a scale so stupend- 
ous, and the sensation produced by such a panoramic 
view of the heavens can only be thought of and felt in 
the souL (See Fig. 9.) 

The great concave of the celestial sphere was as black 
as night. The planets and their satellites, more than 
five hundred in number, were at once in plain view and 
appeared much nearer than when viewed from the 
earth through an atmosphere laden with moisture, 
dust, and gases, and all of them, even to Deimos and 
Phobos, the two little satellites of Mars, familiarly 
known as Dread and Terror, presented well-defined 
disks and shone with a clear, steady light as they moved 
on their unknown celestial rhythm of the universe. 
More than a hundred comets not visible from the earth 
through a powerful telescope were pretty evenly dis- 
tributed over the concave of the sky in the vicinity of 
the sun and moving in every conceivable direction. The 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 35 

fixed stars, which had come out by hundreds of thou- 
sands never before beheld by mortal eyes, appeared to 
be at almost infinite distances and shone with a steady, 
white luster. (See Figs. 6 and 29.) 

And the sun, by far the most conspicuous of all ob- 
jects within our ken of vision, whose great corona had 
apparently arranged itself into a system of concentric 
rings or bands, was sending off the most luminous cones 
of rays and pearly streamers of light, with great in- 
tensity, for millions of miles, into the dark expanse of 
the heavens. 

At this time Mars, which is almost the size of our 
own world and which is nearest to the earth of all the 
superior planets belonging to the major class presented 
a wonderful aspect. It stood out in bold relief and was, 
indeed, a ^'beautiful world on high.'' With my unaided 
eyes I easily traced the shores of its seas and oceans, 
the bounding lines of the deserts and the verdant 
regions, and saw very distinctly the south polar ''cap" 
due probably to ice and snow in the planet's polar re- 
gions. By the aid of the great telescope Profs. Mona- 
han and Galvan made a photograph of it. (See Fig. 10.) 

After a partial relaxation of our nervous tension due 
to the magnificence of the panoramic view of the 
heavens before us. Prof. Galvan called us to the large 
telescope to take a view of the sun. This is a wonderful 
sight. The telescope reveals that the surface of this 
great luminary has a peculiar mottled appearance not 
unlike that of an orange skin, and that it is covered 
also with small, intensely bright bodies irregularly dis- 
tributed. The light from different parts of the solar 
disk, one observes, varies in color — that arising from 
the edges being of a chocolate hue, while that emanat- 
ing from the center has a decidedly blue tint. 



36 TO THE MOON AND 

The sun's distance from us is ninety-three millions 
of miles, a magnitude sb great that if a railroad could 
be built from the earth to this great luminary, an ex- 
press train, traveling day and night without stopping, 
at the rate of thirty miles an hour, would require three 
hundred and fifty-two years to reach its destination. 
Ten generations would be bom and would die, and the 
eleventh generation would see the solar station at the 
end of the route. 

In spite of this tremendous stretch of miles the sun, 
from our viewpoint, measured more than one-half a 
degree. This is equivalent to saying that the sun is a 
globe with a diameter of eight hundred and sixty-five 
thousand and four hundred miles, an area of two trillion 
and three hundred and fifty-four billions of square 
miles, and a volume of three hundred and forty quad- 
rillions of cubic miles. In other words the sun is a 
globe of such stupendous dimensions that if it were 
hollow, it would contain one million and three hundred 
thousand worlds like our own. At first I was startled 
by such enormous magnitudes, which are far beyond 
the grasp of human comprehension ; but this telescopic 
view closely followed up with mathematical demonstra- 
tions by Prof. Galvan led me to realize beyond the 
shadow of all doubt that the dimensions which are 
now attributed to the sun have not been exaggerated. 

And what is still more wonderful is the fact that the 
entire surface of this tremendous globular mass, every- 
where, is constantly overrun by sweeping floods of hot 
molten matter. The chromosphere composed largely 
of luminous, hydrogen gas is the seat of enormous pro- 
tuberances and projections. Tongues of fire sometimes 
dart forth at the prodigous speed of one hundred and 
fifty miles a second to a distance of one hundred thou- 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 37 

sand miles. These jets of hot molten matter sometimes 
make sharp angles with the horizontal plain, and at 
other times right angles; and, when the jets are ver- 
tical, the hot spray dropping back into the seething 
ocean of fire often takes the form of large trees and 
reminds the observer of a forest of Sequoia Gigantea. 
More often the hot descending spray of these great sun- 
storms, sweeping to the left and to the right, presents 
the appearance of stupendous prairie fires. (See Figs* 
12, 13, 14, 15.) 

With the exception of the meteoric bodies, the comets 
are by far the most numerous of all the heavenly bodies 
belonging to the solar system and are, without excep- 
tion, the most fascinating. The suddenness with which 
they flame out in the sky, the enormous lengths of 
their trains, the swiftness of their flight, the strange 
and mysterious forms they assume, their unheralded 
advent and their departure for the profound depths of 
inter-stellar space — all seem to bid defiance to law and 
to partake of the marvelous. Every person on board 
the ship finally centered his interest on this particular 
class of heavenly bodies, and the sensation produced in 
every instant except in the cases of Capt. Ewald and 
Profs. Monahan, Galvan, and Rider, was the same — 
that of dread and loneliness. And Prof. Monahan, as if 
to excite the superstitious fears of all to a higher pitch, 
said: 
"Comets have been looked upon in every age as — 

Threatening the world with famine, plague, and v/ar ; 

To all estates, inevitable losses ; 

To herdsmen, rot; to plowmen, hapless seasons ; 

To sailors, storms ; to cities, civil treason ; and 

To us, they may be looked upon as — what T " 

(See Figs. 2, 16, 17.) 



38 TO THE MOON AND 

The visible comets farthest away from the sun were 
mere faint diffused spots of light upon the dark back- 
ground of the sky, while those near their perihelion 
distances were very large, exceedingly bright, and ac- 
companied by long fan-like trains. They reminded me 
of mammoth bombs exploding, and I naturally won- 
dered what hostile hosts of warriors at the outskirts 
of the universe were bombarding the sun. 

At half past twelve o'clock I again directed my gaze 
toward the earth. Away to the west the more elevated 
parts of the great system of the Cordileras were heav- 
ing into view, and to the unaided eye the crests of the 
massive snow-capped ranges appeared as long white 
lines on the generally darker expanse of the continent. 

At one o'clock we were five hundred and thirty miles 
above the surface of the earth and almost directly over 
Denver, Colo., which we readily located and recognized. 
We saw the long range of the Rocky Mountains in high 
relief go sweeping under us at a speed of nearly a thou- 
sand miles an hour, and by the aid of our small tele- 
scopes traced the channels of the larger western tribu- 
taries of the Mississippi river from their sources to 
their mouths; and at half past one o'clock we had a 
grand sweep of the whole Pacific coast from the Gulf 
of Lower California to the northern boundary of Wash- 
ington. 

This wonderful experience was truly the first and 
only one that ever brought me to so full a realization 
of what an immensely large object this old world is. 
When compared with infinite space she is, in volume, 
nothing more than a floating particle of dust or even a 
molecule ; but, when viewed from an altitude of seven 
hundred miles, she is certainly a thing of magnitude. 
But when seen even from this great distance she does 




FIG. 12. A SOLAR PROMIXENXE. 

This hot Jet extends vertically upward to a distance of eighty 
thousand miles. The spray falling back into the seething ocean 
of fire gives the whole the appearance of an isolated tree. 

I Yerkes Observatory. ) 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 39 

not yet appear as a globe in the sky, but merely as a 
great convex circle with a constantly expanding circum- 
ference. At that time I did not realize that we were 
very far away from the earth, and com.paratively we 
were not ; for on a globe eight inches in diameter our 
altitude would be represented by only three-fifths of an 
inch. 

Our first lunch in celestial space was served at half 
past one o'clock. At ihe close of this meal I was so 
sleepy that I could scarcely compel myself to stay 
awake. I was also very much fatigued — as much so as 
if I had been steadily engaged at manual labor for a 
whole day on the ten-hour system. My drowsy and 
weary condition was due partly to the fact that I had 
been steadily engaged almost the whole of the previous 
night at getting ready for the long voyage, and in part 
by the exciting influences of the weird and wondrous 
beauty to which I had, for the past two hours, been 
subjected, and which had steadily engaged my willing 
attention. I then prostrated myself upon one of the 
couches for sleep and repose. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE FIRST DAY OF THE VOYAGE 

(Continued) 

At half past eight o'clock p. m. I was aroused from 
sleep, partly by a sensation of cold from which I was 
suffering and in part by sharp, snapping sounds all 
about over the ship as if the walls and the dome were 
being pounded on the outside by small, scattering hail 
stones. 

I glanced my eyes about the room and discovered 
that everybody had retired for sleep and repose except 
the captain, the electrician, our ^'family physician," and 
the colored man. Capt. Ewald was faithfully holding 
his position at the helm; Prof. Purnell was getting 
ready to start one of the large electric storage batteries 
for the purpose of furnishing heat for the physical 
comfort of the passengers and the crew, for preparing 
the evening meal, and with the further design of purify- 
ing and vitalizing the air pent up in the ship ; Dr. Whar- 
ton was sitting near the helm, in a quiet conversation 
with the captain ; and Dick Prouty was standing at one 
of the observation windows laughing and talking pretty 
loud, and comparing the sun to a large flower, and the 
comets near their perihelion distances to a swarm of 
bees gathering honey from it. 

40 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 41 

As soon as I was up and dressed, Dick called me to 
his side. I found his comparison to be a very apt one. 
The sun's great corona had arranged itself about this 
luminary in bands and cones of light in such manner 
as to give him the fancied appearance of a large, mag- 
nolia flower; and just at this time there were in the 
vicinity of the sun a great many small comets which 
had from one to three moderately long, bright, well- 
defined trains, and bore a considerable resemblance to 
bees. The nuclii or bodies of the comets represented 
the bodies of the bees, and the trains, their wings ; and 
as the trains of comets always extend off in a direction 
opposite to that of the sun, these fancied bees seemed 
to be in the act of approaching the flower. 

I was with Dick only a few seconds, — just long 
enough to get a glimpse of the sun and the comets on 
which he w^as exercising his fancy and to enter into his 
sympathy sufficiently to appreciate the comparison. 

Shivering with cold and wondering where we were, I 
then hesitatingly approached Capt. Ewald and engaged 
him in a brief conversation. 

''Captain, I am well clothed," said I, ''but in spite of 
this fact I feel like I am freezing.'' 

'•'I am not at all surprised,'' answered he, "for it has 
turned several degrees colder since we left St. Louis 
this morning." 

"Captain, what makes the ship pop this way ?" I in- 
quired. "It seems to be in a rack all over." 

"The maximum density, at which all substances 
naturally occupy the smallest amount of space pos- 
sible," said he in reply, "is 39°, Fahrenheit; and the 
sharp, snapping sounds which you hear are due to the 
expansive force of the material in the walls and the 



42 TO THE MOON AND 

floor of the ship, caused by the intense cold on the out- 
side." 

"Captain, where are we now V I then asked. 

"In longitude 145° east of Greenwich,'' he replied, 
''and in latitude 37° north.'' 

"Your reply is not altogether satisfactory," said I in 
response, "for I do not know yet where we are." 

"Why do you not examine the registers and look all 
about you," inquired he very impatiently, "and try to 
determine the outside conditions and to locate your- 
self?" 

I at once inspected the thermometer and found the 
record there 273°, Centigrade, below the freezing point 
of water. I then examined the barograph and discov- 
ered that we were soaring at an altitude of three thou- 
sand two hundred a;nd fifty miles. I directed my eyes 
to earth again and observed that we were above a great 
expanse of water thickly studded with islands. After 
the lapse of a few minutes I discovered that our ship 
was almost directly above the meridian of Melbourne, 
Australia, and directly over Japan. 

At this time I saw distinctly the whole continent of 
Australia and all the larger islands of the Philippine 
and Malaysian groups, — Borneo, Luzon, New Guinea, 
etc., — sharply outlined by a lighter hue and readily 
recognized them all by their shapes and by their rela- 
tive sizes and positions. 

Their delineations correspond very closely with those 
of their maps found in our geographies, except that 
Australia and the large islands lying adjacent thereto 
seemed drawn-out from east to west, an appearance, 
the captain informed me, due to oblique and aerial per- 
spective. I was able also to follow easily v/ith my eyes 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 43 

the trend of the whole eastern coast of Asia and to see 
inland almost to the Ural Mountains. 

At three o'clock on the following morning we were 
directly over the Caspian Sea, were five thousand three 
hundred and eighty miles above the earth, and had an 
excellent view of all Eurasia, including Japan and the 
British Isles, of the whole of Africa, and of the island 
of Madagascar. 

During the hour beginning with six o'clock in the 
morning the Iberian Peninsula went sweeping under us. 
At seven o'clock we sat down to breakfast. Just at this 
time our craft was seven thousand five hundred and 
thirty miles directly above Lisbon, Portugal, and was 
just launching itself out over the broad waters of the 
Atlantic. Except by the hour of the day as indicated 
by the faces of our clocks and watches" we never knew 
whether to call a meal breakfast, dinner, or supper ; for 
when one is wholly from under the rotary influence of 
the earth, his sun'oundings are the same, at every hour 
of the day. That is to say there is no sunrise nor sun- 
set, no night, but perpetual day with the sun constantly 
at the zenith. 

At eleven o'clock we were almost on the border of 
the Western Continent. In the short space of four 
hours v/e had passed with almost absolute safety from 
the shores of Spain and Portugal to that of the United 
States. At any moment of this time I was able to view 
from limit to limit the same broad expanse of water 
which Columbus more than four hundred years ago was 
ten weeks in crossing at the peril of his life, and of 
which, in a sense, he saw comparatively little. 

Alm.cst before we were aware, it was twelve o'clock, 
noon. At this time we had been out on our voyage just 
twenty-four hours and had seen the earth, as a world 



44 TO THE MOON AND 

foreign to us, make one complete rotation upon her 
axis. Our distance from the earth was eight thousand 
six hundred and ninety-five miles ; and in spite of this 
immense stretch of distance I was able, by the aid of a 
small telescope, to trace faintly the courses of the larger 
streams of the Mississippi system. 

And according to the best means we had at hand for 
determining latitude and longitude, we were directly 
above a point on the earth's surface sixty-two miles 
almost due east of the city of St. Louis. 

The earth, as a whole, no longer seemed to me merely 
as a great convex circle with a constantly dilating cir- 
cumference, but appeared as a great globe lying in high 
relief, out in the heavens. I could see the whole of the 
American Continent in its full length and breadth — 
from Maine to California and from the Arctic Archi- 
pelago and the northern coast of Greenland to No Man's 
Land of Patagonia. 

The earth truly presented a magnificent appearance, 
and was by far the most conspicuous and beautiful of 
all the planets. 

It would be difficult to convey to the mind of anyone 
by means of words anything like a very coiTsct idea 
of her size as she appeared to me. The members of our 
party differed widely in their opinions as to her dimen- 
sions. Some imagined her diameter to be somewhat 
less than one thousand feet, while others thought it to 
be anywhere from twelve hundred to fifteen hundred 
feet, and still others who gave it as their opinion that 
her diameter was no less than a half mile. 

Perhaps Profs. Monahan and Galvan's reckoning on 
this point would be a more satisfactory presentation of 
the facts in the case. From our point of observation 
these learned men by means of mathem.atical and as- 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 45 

tronomical instruments drew imaginary tangents to the 
circumference of one of the earth's great circles, and 
the divergence of these lines showed 36°, or one-tenth 
of a circle. In other words, the test exhibited that ten 
such disks as the earth presented, placed edge to edge, 
would form a belt around the celestial sphere, or that 
two and a half such disks so arranged with respect to 
one another would reach from a point in the horizon to 
the zenith. 

As an object of beauty and intense interest the earth, 
as she presented herself to me at this time, would be a 
very difficult task for even the most imaginative mind 
to approach in the way of description. 

Her atmosphere was almost entirely free from mois- 
ture; and although I was viewing this beautiful old 
world from a distance of approximately nine thousand 
miles, it was not difficult under such a condition for the 
unaided eye to easily observe in pretty sharp outline 
the contour of the continents, and by the aid of a small 
telescope to detect pretty easily the relief in the moun- 
tain chains and even in the chains of hills. 

The face of the earth in general was almost the color 
of a bright-skinned orange and surrounded by a pale- 
blue border about eight feet broad. 

At other times, when the atmosphere was pretty gen- 
erally laden with moisture, the earth appeared to be 
enveloped in a mantle of mist or vapor varying in hue 
from a deep gold color to that of almost a fleecy white- 
ness. And in spite of the fact that the earth shrank 
away in size as we steadily approached the moon, I was 
able, under the most favorable atmospheric conditions, 
at any time during our transits, to trace with my eyes 
the delineations or the outlines of the continents and 
of the larger islands, without the aid of the telescope. 



CHAPTER IX 

PERILS IMAGINARY AND REAL 

The captain steered with a steady hand, and onward 
our craft went, day after day, at the uniform speed of 
three hundred and fifty-five miles an hour, through the 
changeless, trackless, and limitless calm, and all the 
while it ran perfectly steady except that just now and 
then I felt a slight tremor or a gentle tilt. 

In spite of the fact that the monotony was great, no 
one became restless, impatient, or despondent for sev- 
eral days, because our surroundings in general were 
attended with things of wondrous beauty upon which 
to gaze and about which to think. 

The extreme silence that prevailed was awful. Not a 
sound was to be heard in the whole universe during the 
entire voyage except a weak, but energetic fizzing and 
clicking of delicate but strong machinery in three small 
boxes, — one at each end of the sitting room and another 
at the highest point of the ceiling— and the occasional 
sound of a low, weak, human voice. 

At noon on November 29, when we had been out on 
the voyage just a week, several of the members of our 
party were violently seized with a panic which, in a 
sense, came very near ending disastrously. I, for one, 
was stricken with fear and was frightened almost out 
of my wits, yet I am not able to state any assignable 

46 




FIG. 13. SOLAR PROMINENCES SHOWING CURRENTS 
IN DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS. 

(Yerkes Observatory.) 




FIG. 14. SOLAR PROMINENCES SHOWING CURRENTS 
IN DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS. 

More often the hot descending spray of these great sun storms, 
sweeping to the left and to the right, presents the appearance of 
stupendous prairie fires. 

(Yerkes Observatory.) 




FIG. 15. SOLAR PROMINENCE SHOWING CHANGES. 

(Yerkes Observatory.) 



^^^^Wi^^^:M^^^^m^^^ 




FIG. 16. GIACOBINFS COMET, 1908. 

(Yerkes Observatory.) 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 47 

reasons for the general alarm. The most satisfactory 
explanation that I can give is that some one became 
frightened at what he thought was immediate danger, 
and the emotion of fear rapidly spread from one to an- 
other until about half the members of the party were 
almost terrorized out of their senses. Within two or 
three days I realized that this sense of fear was truly 
inspired by trifling causes or misapprehensions of dan- 
ger. 

We had just finished our noon lunch and, as usual, 
immediately after meals, were sitting in our easy chairs 
engaged in an all-round, quiet conversation. It was 
clearly manifest that even at this time the newness of 
things about us was beginning to wane, at least in the 
cases of a few, and that time was dragging a little — 
sufficiently to allow the minds of those with slightly 
idle tendencies to multiply, magnify, and play upon 
imaginary dangers along the way. 

The conversation finally ceased entirely for a few 
minutes, when Mr. Waite suddenly rose from his seat, 
gave a gentle but restless sigh, and walked straightway 
to the registers. He first inspected the theiTtiometer 
and then examined the barograph. After gazing stead- 
ily for perhaps two minutes at the alarming records he 
found there, he turned suddenly and restlessly away 
and resumed his seat. His lips were white and his face 
was pale and without expression. After a short inter- 
val he addressed all present as follows : 

"Gentlemen, I seriously regret that I ever ventured 
to go on this voyage." 

*'Why so, Frank?'' inquired Prof. Galvan in great 
surprise. 

^'Because I do not believe we shall ever be able to 
reach destination,'' replied Mr. Waite nervously, "for 



48 TO THE PAOON AND 

we are now fifty-nine thousand eight hundred and fif- 
teen miles from the earth and farther from the moon 
than we were the day of our departure." 

'That is right, Frank," interrupted Prof. Brunor, 
'*and besides, the moon has moved more than 90° from 
west to east upon her orbit." 

''Well, if we never get to the moon, we can go back 
home again," said Prof. Pumell humorously, "if we 
don't joy-ride around up here in the sky until our food 
supplies give out or the batteries become discharged." 

'1 feel no uneasiness about our provisions running 
low, but what would be the immediate and final result," 
inquired Mr. Waite, "if the batteries should become ex- 
hausted, or if they should for any cause whatever fail 
to perform their work ?" 

"We would freeze to death, or perish from breathing 
carbon-dioxide," replied Prof. Pumell, "within twenty- 
four hours." 

"How did the thermometer on the outside stand, 
Frank, when you examined it a few minutes ago?" 
asked Mr. Vanderlip. 

"The record there was 273°, Centigrade, below the 
freezing point of water," replied Mr. Waite. 

"We could not survive long," interrupted Prof. Mona- 
han, "if we had no means of furnishing heat and ab- 
sorbing carbon-dioxide." 

"Do you suppose there is any likelihood," inquired 
Mr. Shipley, "of the batteries becoming exhausted or 
of their going dead?" 

"Such a thing is possible," replied Prof. Pumell, 'T)ut 
not at all probable. You understand that one of these 
batteries will enable us to live sealed up in this room 
a hundred days ; and besides, we have two more charged 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 49 

batteries sitting there idle and ready for use when the 
need demands it.'* 

"Prof. Rider, has the ship changed her course?'' in- 
quired Mr. Vanderlip. 

"No; the moon will have to revolve entirely around 
the sky, and therefore about the earth," replied he, 
"before we shall be able to reach destination. One 
week from today the moon will be almost directly be- 
yond the earth from us, and one hundred and twenty 
thousand miles farther away from us than she was on 
the day of our departure ; and in three weeks from now 
she will be directly in front of us and by that star to 
which the ship was gauged at the beginning of the 
voyage." 

"And where will the ship then be?" inquired Mr, 
Vanderlip. 

"The ship will be there too," replied Prof. Rider, "if 
we hold steadily to our present course and keep up the 
limit of our speed, which is three hundred and fifty- 
five miles an hour." 

"How fast does the moon travel in her orbit ?" asked 
Prof. Knowlton. 

"Two thousand one hundred and sixty miles an hour 
is her average speed," replied Prof. Galvan. 

"In my opinion it is very little that any one knows," 
interrupted Mr. Waite, "^where the moon will be when 
we are due to land. I don't believe anybody knows the 
distance from the earth to the moon, no way, nor how 
fast she travels upon her orbit." 

"Why, Frank, have you no confidence in figures nor 
faith in astronomical science?" exclaimed Prof. Mona- 
han in great surprise. "Listen, Frank," continued he, 
"and let me briefly explain to you a matter in mathe- 
matics : if lines be drawn from the extremities of one 



50 TO THE MOON AND 

of the earth's diameters to a point indicating the cen- 
ter of the moon's disk, a triangle will be formed, of 
which one side and two angles will be known. With 
these data the distance to the moon may readily be 
computed. In fact this is one of the simplest calcula- 
tions in trigonometry with which the astronomer has 
to deal. And the distance to the moon being known, 
any school boy or school girl can easily determine the 
diameter and the circumference of the moon's orbit, and 
her speed through space." 

*'Yes, and it is my candid opinion," said Prof. Thor- 
sen, "that when we attempt to land on the moon while 
she moves at the terrific speed of more than two thou- 
sand miles an hour, our ship and contents will be 
knocked into smithereens or dissolved into molecules." 

"Troubles borrowed from this source," replied Prof. 
Monahan, "are imaginary ones. In March of 1912 Capt. 
Ewald visited Prof. Galvan and me at our homes in 
Dublin, with the express purpose of discussing with us 
the law of falling bodies, with a view to inducing us to 
make this voyage with him and to effecting this very 
landing. After several days of very close and careful 
investigation we proved, even beyond the shadow of all 
doubt, that such a landing could easily and safely be 
made ; and in three weeks from now you shall witness 
a practical demonstration of this fact." 

"I hope you, Profs. Galvan and Rider, and Capt. 
Ewald understand your business," replied Prof. Thor- 
sen, "but my faith is like Frank's — a little shaky." 

I too was terrorized almost out of my senses, but 
tried to keep silent. I came to regard all speculation 
with indescribable terror or as the presage of some 
impending calamity, and felt sure that somehow or in 
some way we should all be totally and forever lost, so 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 51 

far as the present life is concerned, in the immeasurable 
depths of trackless space. 

I longed for a solid foundation upon which once more 
to place my feet, but nothing of this kind v/as within 
reach. I saw hundreds of planets, which resembled 
billiard balls racing with one another through the sky, 
but they were at distances so immense that the strong- 
est intellect or even the brightest imagination in its 
effort to grasp them would have collapsed weakly be- 
fore them. And the awful void about us made me feel 
that our ship was surely and steadily shrinking away 
to a mere point. I felt that our lives were hanging on 
a thread ; and my full realization of the fact that our 
destiny was in the hands of one, self-willed man who 
possessed unbounded confidence in himself and who was 
not, in the least, compliant with the wishes of anyone 
else, made the situation appear to me all the more 
alarming. 

Finally a petition to turn back, with a half dozen 
names to it, was handed to the captain, at which he 
only smiled, and to which he gave no response. On the 
following morning those who had risen in opposition to 
authority called Prof. Rider to one side and asked him 
if he would steer the ship home if they threw Capt. 
Ewald overboard. To this question he refused to make 
reply, but he began at once to look into the matter. Dr. 
Wharton then advised and urged the captain to give 
the mutineers some wholesome instruction, entertain- 
ment, or amusement, in order to allay their fears and to 
prevent, if possible, any serious disaster. 



CHAPTER X 

PERILS IMAGINARY AND REAL— 

(Continued) 

Early on the following morning, after two more 
square meals and eight hours of sleep unrefreshing to 
a number of us, Capt. Ewald, for the entertainment of 
all, and especially for the instruction and the amuse- 
ment of those who had attempted to destroy due subor- 
dination to authority, asked that some one volunteer 
to discuss the law of universal gravitation and some 
formulae based thereon and relating directly to falling 
bodies. The work was at once taken up ; and the cap- 
tain, during a pause in the discussion, cast two of the 
pigeons and the gander into the boundless deep. 

Promptly at the call for a volunteer to discuss the 
questions at hand Prof. Daniel C. Monahan, the learned 
mathematician and astronomer, ripe in years of ex- 
perience, came quietly forward holding in his right 
hand a pointer and carrying on his left arm a number 
of large, heavy, cardboards bearing some diagrams, the 
statement and the solution of an algebraic equation, 
and some formulae. 

After politely requesting all to be seated this grand 
man took a standing position in front of his small but 
appreciative audience, made an earnest appeal for un- 
divided attention, and then spoke as follows : 

52 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 53 

"Gentlemen, I desire to discuss briefly before you this 
morning the law of universal gravitation and some 
formulae based thereon and relating directly to the law 
of falling bodies. 

"These inquiries are not by any means difRcult ; and, 
for soliciting and urging your riveted attention to, and 
your careful consideration of, questions which to mathe- 
maticians of some repute appear quite simple, and for 
thus seeming to recognize you as being stupid or ig- 
norant, it is both proper and in place that I should offer 
a slight apology, or at least an explanation. 

"Truly I realize that you, whom it is my honor and 
pleasure to address, constitute an intelligent body and 
that you, as individual members of that body, assem- 
bled here for the common purpose of receiving such in- 
struction as I on this occasion may be able to impart, 
are not only men of more than ordinary natural ability 
to understand, but college-bred men as well. There- 
fore, I do not presume that any one of you is totally or 
even in part ignorant of the questions at hand. Rather, 
I think it most probable that every one of you either is 
or has been familiar with the points to be emphasized. , 
But because the clear understanding of the matter 
which I wish finally to present to you depends largely 
upon your perfect familiarity with the things about 
which I am going to talk first, I again insist that you 
give me audience and follow me closely in the discussion 
of the law and in the substitution of the known numer- 
ical values for the literal quantities found in these 
formulae. 

"The law of universal gravitation as announced by 
the great mathematician and astronomer. Sir Isaac 
Newton, reads as follows : 



54 TO THE MOON AND 

" ^Every particle of matter in the universe attracts 
every other particle of matter with a force directly pro- 
portional to the product of their masses and decreasing 
as the square of the distance between them increases/ 

*'And it follows from the wording of this law that 
somewhere in the straight line connecting the centers 
of any two heavenly bodies there is a particular point 
at which if any object of space be set free to move in 
obedience to the natural forces exerted upon it, this 
matter would remain afloat, or on a balance, so to speak ; 
that is, it would be as much inclined to move in the one 
direction as in the other. This point is called the point 
of equilibrium. And after you have followed me closely 
through this discussion, the underlying principles by 
which the location of such point is in every instance 
mathematically determined will be clear to your minds. 

"But let us see if we understand the wording of the 
law, in order that we may lead up to the conclusion 
intelligently. 

"In the statement of the law the word 'particle' does 
not necessarily mean molecule, but simply a quantity of 
matter so small that all points of it may be considered 
as being at the same distance from an attracting body. 
In the case of spheres the bodies may be of any size 
whatever, if all the matter be regarded as concentrated 
at their centers. 

"The pull or the attractive force that two bodies 
exert upon each other depends upon two things — ^the 
inherent attractive capacity of the matter they contain, 
and the distance by which they are separated. First, 
let us examine the law so far as it relates to the in- 
herent attractive capacity of matter, which depends 
solely upon its mass. 




FIG. 17. MOREHOUSE COMET, 1908. 

( Yerkes Observatory. ) 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 55 

"Two spheres weighing one gram each, at a given 
distance apart, attract each other with a certain amount 
of force. If the mass of one of the spheres be increased 




1 meter 




to nine grams and that of the other to three grams, the 
force exerted by them will, according to the law, be 
twenty-seven times as great. It is easy to understand 
that the force must be proportional to the product of 
their masses. Since there are nine grams in one mass 



1 meter 





and three in the other, each of the nine grams of the 
first attracts each of the three grams of the second; 
or, each of the three grams of the second attracts each 
of the nine grams of the first. The total force exerted 
must, therefore, be twenty-seven times as great as that 
with which one gram attracts another gram at the same 
distance. 

"From the data herein contained is derived the direct 
proportion, 

Latter Pull : Former Pull : : 9x3 : 1x1, or : : 27 ; 1, 

which is equivalent to saying that the pull or force 



56 TO THE MOON AND 

exerted by the two larger spheres on each other bears 
the same ratio to that put forth by the two smaller 
spheres that 27 bears to 1, and which exemplifies that 
part of the law which says, ^Every paricle of matter in 
the universe attracts every other particle of matter 
with a force directly proportional to the product of their 
masses/ 

"As previously stated, the force that any two bodies 
exert upon each other depends upon two things — the in- 
wrought attractive capacity of the matter they contain, 
and the distance by which they are separated. Up to 
this point in the discussion we have dealt with the in- 
herent or innate attractive capacity of matter which 
depends solely upon its mass. Now let us take up the 
question of the law so far as it relates to the distance 
by which the attracting bodies are separated. 

"Two spheres weighing one gram each, placed at a 
distance of one meter apart, attract each other with a 




1 meter 




certain amount of force. Now if the spheres be sepa- 
rated from each other by a distance of three meters, 
the force exerted by them upon each other will be only 




3 meters 




one-ninth as great. From the data arising from the 
above assumed condition is derived the inverse propor- 
tion, 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 57 

Latter Pull : Former Pull : : 1' : 3% or : : 1 : 9, 

which illustrates that part of the law v;hich reads, 
'Every particle of matter in the universe attracts every 
other particle of matter with a force decreasing as the 
square of the distance between them increases/ 

**Now examine the following figure and note that un- 
like either of the two foregoing illustrative diagrams 
it involves completely both elements of the law, one of 
which relates to the pull of two bodies upon each other 
due to their inherent attractive capacities, and, the 
other to the force exerted by them upon each other due 
to the distance by which they are separated. The data 
herein contained give rise to the proportion. 



1 meter 






Latter Pull : Former Pull : : 27x1 : 1x9, or : : 3 : 1. 

"This proportion is obtained by multiplying together 
the corresponding terms of the two foregoing propor- 
tions, and is equivalent to saying that the force exerted 
by the nine-gram sphere and the three-gram sphere 
upon each other at a distance apart of three meters 
bears the same ratio to the pull of the two one-gram 
spheres at a distance apart of one meter that 3 bears 
to 1. 



58 TO THE MOON AND 

'This last proportion together with the accompany- 
ing illustrative diagram contains everything found in 
the two foregoing ones and sets forth or exemplifies at 
once completely the whole law. 

"We will now discuss the law, taking into consid- 
eration, this time, that there is an intervening mass 
upon which the attracting bodies are exerting their 
influences. 

"Let A and B in the accompanying diagram represent 
any two heavenly bodies of equal mass, distant from 
each other any number of astronomical units for meas- 
uring celestial distances, and let C be a third object of 
space, of any mass whatever, located at the midway 
point of the straight line connecting their centers. And 
let M symbolize the masses of A and B, and m that of C. 






Figure 1 

"Under the conditions assumed the forces exerted by 
A and B on C are equal. As a result, these bodies exert- 
ing their forces upon the intervening mass in opposite 
directions counteract them and thereby fix the point of 
equilibrium at the middle of the straight line that mea- 
sures the distance between their centers* 

"As a further consideration of the inherent attrac- 
tive capacity of matter, let us suppose that the mass 
of A has been increased to four times its original mass 
while that of B remains unchanged. 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 59 






Figure 2 

"Under this supposition it is clear that the pull of A 
on C is four times as great as that of B on C and that 
the point of equilibrium lies somewhere in the direct 
line connecting the centers of B and C, because the in- 
wrought attractive capacities of any two bodies are 
directly proportional to the product of their masses. 
This gives rise, in this case to the direct proportion, 

Pull of A on C : Pull of B on C : : 4Mm : Mm, or : : 4 ; 1. 

"By means of the two foregoing illustrative dia- 
grams I have set forth before your minds, in a clear 
light, no doubt, only that part of the law which relates 
to the innate attractive capacity of matter, which de- 
pends solely upon its mass ; but this inwrought capacity 
of matter is not the only thing with which the law is 
concerned. 

"We know that the force of attraction, or the pull of 
matter, varies with the increase or the decrease of dis- 
tance and that this variation is in an inverse ratio to 
the square of the distance. 

"Let us assume the conditions set forth in connection 
with Fig. 1, and suppose A and B to be four astrono- 



60 TO THE MOON AND 

mical units apart. As the mass of A is equal to that 






of B, and as C lies equally distant from them, the forces 
exerted by them upon the intervening body counteract 
each other and establish the point of equilibrium at C. 
"Now if C be brought twice as near B, the force of 
B's attraction upon it becomes four times as great as 
before, four being the square of two. B's inherent at- 
tractive capacity, which depends solely upon its mass, 
or quantity of matter, remains the same; but the force 
of the attraction, or the pull, is increased because of 
the decrease of distance. At the same time A's pull 
upon C is diminished according to the same law and 





Figure 3 

becomes only four-ninths of what it was before, four- 
ninths being the square of two-thirds. Dividing 4 by 
4/9 we obtain 9, which shows that measured by the 
effect of distance alone^ B's attraction on C has become 

nine times that of A's. 

"The discussion on this particular point has not 
placed the matter in a clear light? Well, then, we will 
go over the work again with different illustrations. 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 61 

"Now let us first condense the two foregoing illustra- 
tions, together with their data, into one illustrative 
diagram, as follows : 





"You understand that B has two pulls on C — one 
while C is at a distance of two astronomical units, and 
another while at a distance of one astronomical unit. 
From these data is derived the inverse proportion. 

Latter Pull of B on C : Former Pull of B on C : : 2' : 1\ 
or : : 4 : 1=4. 

In other words, the attractive force exerted by B on C 
at a distance of one astronomical unit is four times as 
great as that exerted by B on C at a distance of two 
astronomical units. 

"It is true also that A has two pulls on C — one while 
C is at a distance of two astronomical units, and 
another while at a distance of three astronomical units. 
From the data here given arises the inverse proportion, 

Latter Pull of A on C : Former Pull of A on C : : 2' : 3', 
or : : 4 : 9 = 4/9. 

This is saying that the attractive force exerted by A 
on C at a distance of three astronomical units is only 
four-ninths as great as that exerted by A on C at a 
distance of two astronomical units. 



62 TO THE MOON AND 

"'Now dividing 4, the result obtained from the first 
of the two foregoing proportions, by 4/9, the answer 
acquired from the second, we get 9 for a quotient. 
This shows that the pull of B on C at a distance of one 
unit is nine times as great as that of A on C at a dis- 
tance of three units. 

"But as the assumption is that A and B are equal in 
mass and therefore possess the attractive property in 
the same degree, the foregoing final result, 9, may be 
obtained at once and direct by embodying the two pro- 
portions in one, thus: 

Pull of Bon C : Pull of Aon C :: 3' : T, or :: 9 ; 1 = 9. 

"Now according to the assumed conditions which 
result in the three foregoing inverse proportions we 
must, in order to counteract the forces exerted by A 
and B on C and thereby establish the point of equil- 
ibrium at a distance of three units from A, increase 
the mass of A by nine times its former mass. 



■ , ■ ^^ 



Fig. 5. 

This gives rise to a proportion of another nature — 
the direct proportion, 

9M : M :: 3' : r, or 9 : 1, 

which is not out of harmony with the law, and which 






FIG. 18. STAR CLUSTER. 

(Yerkes Observatory* ) 




FIG. 19. STAR CLUSTER. 

(Yei-kes Observatory.) 




FIG. 20. GREAT NEBULA IX ANDROMEDA. 



(Yerkes Observatory.) 



64 TO THE MOON AND 

from which we readily deduce the equation, 
81M M 



x'^ (240000— x)' 

which, when solved, gives for results 

X = 216000 
240000— x= 24000 

^'According to Newton's law a point of equilibrium 
exists somewhere in the direct line connecting the 
centers of any two heavenly bodies whether they be 
planets, comets, meteors, or fixed stars. And such a 
point inserts itself, or rather exists, in the straight 
line connecting the centers of any two bodies whether 
they be in a position of permanent rest, suspended by 
means of cords in mid-air, or in a state of motion as 
when cast off into free space. 

'•'At the present time the parts of the ship's running 
gear are adjusted for an ethereal flight. As a result, 
no influence whatever is exerted by the heavenly bod- 
ies upon the craft. By virtue of the mysterious run- 
ning gear of our craft all relation or connection be- 
tween the ship and any and all foreign matter, so far 
as attractive capacity of matter is concerned, is 
severed. The law of universal gravitation has, so far 
as we are now concerned, ceased to exist; and, as a 
result, the ship floats in inter-stellar space as lazily and 
quietly as an inflated balloon in an airfiight. 

"By a displacement of the parts of this machinery 
the power of universal attraction would be liberated, 
or practically called into action. As a result, a point 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 65 

of equilibrium would insert itself in every straight line 
connecting the ship's center of gravity with those of 
all foreign bodies, and the craft would at once respond 
noticeably to the most powerful influence exerted upon 
it, and in strict obedience to the law of universal grav- 
itation fall away in that direction at a constantly in- 
creasing rate of speed until the two bodies came 
together with tremendous force/' 



CHAPTER XI 

PERILS IMAGINARY AND REAL— 

(Continued) 

Just as Prof. Monahan concluded the last sentence 
he smiled, made a slight bow, and took his seat. Then 
Capt. Ewald rose to his feet, signaled to the colored 
man to bring on the fowls, and said: 

"Now, gentlemen, we are going to cast out two of 
the pigeons and the gander into the limitless abyss 
about us; and, as by virtue of the proper adjustment 
of the ship's running gear the power of attraction be- 
tween the craft and all foreign matter is completely 
severed, the birds will descend to the earth unchecked 
by any force behind them with steadily-increasing 
velocity." 

Just as the captain was concluding this utterance, 
Dick Prouty came forward wagging the coop. 

With his own hands Capt. Ewald himself promptly 
and quickly placed the pigeons and the gander into the 
big steel pipe, closed the door, and fastened it with the 
band ring. He then took hold of the lever, quickly 
faced about and exclaimed : 

"Ready !'^ 

We at once fell upon our faces to peer through the 
panes of glass set in the floor of the ship. By the 

66 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 67 

time we were in a position to observe, the captain 
pulled the lever to turn on the compressed air from 
the dome and at the same time said: 

*'Now fly your way home." 

Out the fowls went with considerable force but un- 
harmed, to be sure, as there was neither atmosphere 
nor any other matter on the outside to offer them re- 
sistance and thereby to do them violence. 

The pigeons were very dark, and owing to the slight 
contrast between their color and that of the heavens 
about us I did not, after a few seconds, see them any 
more ; but I saw the gander all the while as plainly as 
if he had been a big wad of cotton up against a freshly- 
painted blackboard only a few feet away. 

After he had fallen perhaps a distance of three 
hundred yards he appeared to be not more than fifty 
feet beneath the floor of the ship. Why, I could dis- 
tinctly discern his every movement; and even see his 
eyes, his toe-nails, and his nostrils — ^my vision was so 
clear. 

This brave old bird, when he discovered that he had 
been liberated, at once coiled his neck about his crop, 
threw his head far back over his body, and flapped his 
wings almost as rapidly as a humming bird. For some 
time he appeared to remain just beneath the ship, and 
seemed to be suffering intensely from cold and to be 
struggling hard for breath. Presently he began to 
fall behind the ship ; and, as there was not any atmos- 
phere about him to offer his wings resistance, it was 
clear to be seen that his efforts to propel himself by 
means of his strength were futile. 

At the expiration of seven minutes, when I last saw 
the gander, he had descended a distance of five hundred 



68 TO THE MOON AND 

and thirty-four miles and acquired a velocity of two 
and a half miles a second. At this time he appeared 
to me no larger than a man's thumb and resembled a 
large snow flake away out against the dark background 
of the sky in the direction of the earth. He was slowly 
rotating end over end ; and I am sure he was dead, for 
he looked limp. He reached the aerial region of the 
earth in one hour and nineteen minutes at which time 
he had acquired a velocity of twenty-nine miles a sec- 
ond, a speed so immense that the resistance offered by 
the earth's atmosphere must have set him ablaze all 
over ; and, by the time he reached the surface he was 
evidently a ''cooked goose." 

Perhaps it may not appear reasonable that we could 
distinctly see the gander at the distance of five hundred 
and thirty-four miles, yet it was true. Really the dis- 
tance was five hundred and seventy-six miles, for dur- 
ing the seven minutes we were watching him in his de- 
scent, our ship had advanced in its course forty-two 
miles. It is truly wonderful how clear one's vision is 
where there is no atmosphere laden with vapor, smoke 
and dust to obstruct the view. 

After the gander had disappeared in the depth of 
space Prof. Monahan quickly reappeared in front of his 
audience. After demanding attention he turned a 
large card-board, thereby exposing to view four for- 
mulae relating directly to the law of falling bodies. 



(1) 


(3) 


S = 16 T. 


T = i/4VS 


(2) 


(4) 


V = 32 T. 


V= 8VS 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 69 

"Please direct your attention this way again/' said 
Prof. Monahan, '*for I have something of unusual in- 
terest to tell you, which is well worth your time to con- 
sider. These formulae," he continued, *'in which S 
represents the space moved in feet, T the time in sec- 
onds, and V the velocity in feet per second acquired in 
falling S feet, or in falling T seconds, will enable you 
to find out anything you should desire to know about 
the fowls — their distance from their position of rest 
from which they were hurled, the time required in 
falling any given distance, and their velocity at any 
given time. Now ask any questions you wish, and by 
means of these formulae I shall take pleasure in giving 
you the desired information." 

"How far will the birds have fallen," asked Prof. 
Thorsen, "in one hour from the time they were cast 
out of the ship?" 

"The time is 1 hr., or 3600 sc," answered Prof. Mon- 
ahan, "and substituting this numerical value for T in 
the first formula shown above we have, 

S = 16 r = 16x3600x3600 = 207360000 ft., or 
39272 mi." 

"How do you determine the length of time," inquired 
Prof. Pumell, "the fowls will be in reaching the earth ?" 

"The space to be passed over in this case is 68160 
mi., or 359884800 ft.," replied Prof. Monahan, "and 
substituting this numerical value in th^ third formula 
we have, 

T = 14VS = KV359884800 = 4742 sec, or 
1 hr. 19 min." 



70 TO THE MOON AND 

"What will be the velocity of these birds per second/* 
asked Mr. Vanderlip, '*when they reach the earth?'' 

''The time is 1 hr. 19 min., or 4742 sec./' came the 
prompt reply, "'and substituting this value in the sec- 
ond formula we have, 

V = 32 T = 32x4742 = 151744 ft., or 29 mi." 

''The velocity per second may be found also," con- 
tinued Prof. Monahan, "by substituting the space 
passed over in feet, in the fourth formula. Thus : 

V = 8V359884800 = 151760 ft., or 29 mi." 

"Will these formulae hold good," inquired Mr. Ship- 
ley, "in cases of any or all falling bodies regardless of 
their masses or their density?" 

"A cannon ball, a piece of cork, and a feather started 
from the same place and at the same time, from a posi- 
tion of rest," came the response, "would reach the 
earth's surface at the same time. All falling bodies, 
regardless of mass or density, obey the same law when 
descending in a vacuum." 

"I have no inclination to want to ask unnecessary 
questions," interrupted Mr. Vanderlip, "but what is a 
vacuum?" 

"A vacuum," responded Prof. Monahan, "is unoc- 
cupied space — space in which there is not even the 
vestige of air. Celestial or inter-stellar space is a 
great natural vacuum." 

For more than an hour, perhaps, we were steadily 
engaged at either asking questions, or at light exer- 
cises in mathematics, in which all took part. 




FIG 22. TRIFID NEBULA IN SAGITARIUS. 

(Yerkes Observatory.) 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 71 

And it is wonderful what a wholesome effect these 
exercises produced. All the fears of those who the day 
before refused to subordinate themselves to authority- 
vanished, and not a word was again said in regaixi to 
returning home. 

This day of trouble was Nov. 29th. The dangers 
were only imaginary ones, and really there was not the 
slightest grounds for any of this alarm. 

But on Dec. 2, just three days later, grave dangers 
unlooked for and unthought-of did arise on every side. 

It was five o'clock in the afternoon. Capt. Ewald 
was at the steering wheel and the craft was heaving 
silently onward at the limit of its speed. Most of the 
party were quietly sitting in the chairs and seemed at 
this time to be in a dreamy or meditative mood. Prof. 
Galvan was star-gazing and I was at his side gaining 
such astronomical knowledge as I could by observation 
and by asking questions. 

Presently I observed that something unusual in the 
sky was holding his attention fixed. He finally ceased 
to give any heed to my questions and rapidly began to 
make observations in every conceivable direction. 
After his attention had been closely engaged for some 
thirty minutes he briskly tapped me on the shoulder, 
commanded me to go v/ith him, and walked hastily to 
the helm where Capt. Ewald was engaged with Prof. 
Rider in a quiet conversation. 

"Captain, I have no inclination whatever to want to 
excite further alarm,^' said Prof. Galvan, ''but we are 
now truly in imminent and unavoidable danger." 

''What is it?^' quickly asked the captain with a look 
indicating a mild degree of surprise. 



72 TO THE MOON AND 

"We are in a shoal of meteoric bodies and a cloud 
of star-dust,'^ replied Prof. Galvan. *1 can see some 
of the larger ones of those more remote without the 
aid of the telescope." 

"Whatever else you may do or say," responded the 
captain, cutting his eyes fiercely and rapidly first at 
me and then at Prof. Rider, "please do not make any 
mention of this discovery to any one else during this 
voyage. We have had trouble enough like that which 
such publication might bring." 

"I have studied astronomy a little," said Prof. Rider, 
"but I am not able to call to mind just what meteoric 
bodies are." 

"Meteoric bodies or stones are truly little worlds 
varying in diameter from a half inch to several feet," 
replied Prof. Galvan, "and varying in weight from a 
few ounces to several tons. Like the planets, they are 
globular in form, obey the law of gravitation, and re- 
volve around the sun in regular periods of time." 

"Millions of this class of heavenly bodies come in 
contact with the earth daily," interrupted the captain, 
"and as they sweep through the atmosphere the fric- 
tion partly arrests their motion and converts them into 
heat and light. They are then called meteors and may 
be seen in great numbers at night. As there is no 
atmosphere far out in space where we are, to offer them 
resistance, they are not self-luminous and can be seen 
only by the reflected light of the sun." 

"I cannot understand," said Prof Rider inquiringly 
and with some degree of emphasis, "how" these me- 
teoric bodies could harm us in the least." 

"These little planets travel at a speed of more than 
twenty-five miles a second," the captain replied, "and 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 73 

if one of these worlds in miniature weighing about a 
ton should strike our ship, you would perhaps know 
how much harm they are capable of doing." 

"Well, what is star-dust?" then inquired I. 

"Star-dust," interrupted Prof. Galvan, "is a cloud of 
meteoric stones ranging in size from that of a wild 
grape to that of a billiard ball." 

"Now tell me, if you please," said Prof. Rider, "how 
these wee things could do us any harm." 

"Burwell, the force of a: discharge from a machine 
gun would be feeble in comparison with that with 
which these treacherous little worlds would strike our 
ship," replied Prof. Galvan, "if it were to get in their 
path. The observation windows, which are ten inches 
thick, could no more resist them, traveling at this in- 
credible speed, than an ordinary pane of glass could 
resist the discharge from a Springfield rifle." 

In about three days the danger seemed to be over. 
After their disappearance the astronomers said that 
they expected our ship to be struck at any moment by 
one of these travelers of the sky, and dissolved to 
molecules and scattered in space, to be picked up in 
piece-meals during subsequent periods by passing plan- 
ets, meteoric bodies and comets, 



CHAPTER XII 

PERPLEXING EXPERIENCES 

These worlds in miniature from the largest to the 
smallest, revolve individually around the sun, but myr- 
iads of them follow the same orbit and therefore travel 
in the same direction. 

On account of their volumes and their masses the 
larger of this order of heavenly bodies deserve to be 
classed as minor, primary planets, rather than as me- 
teoric bodies. I observed scores of them whose 
diameters range from one hundred to three hundred 
feet and which, when seen at distances ranging from 
one hundred to seven hundred miles, appeared to vary 
in size from that of an orange to that of a foot-ball 
and were distinctly visible as they rapidly defiled along 
the sky in great numbers. I could not hear them, be- 
cause there was no intervening element to offer them 
resistance and thereby to conduct sound, nor could I 
see those that passed very near the ship on account of 
the extreme swiftness of their flight. 

These that went by on the side opposite the sun were 
of a bright-orange color, while those that passed be- 
tween us and the sun were in color a steel-gray and 
bounded around by threads or narrow zones of dull-red 
light produced by the sun shining beyond the lines of 
illumination. 

74 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 75 

Some seemed to be traveling much faster than oth- 
ers, but this was an optical illusion due to the differ- 
ences in distances from our point of observation. 

In spite of the fact that our craft was steadily and 
rapidly moving onward, it appeared to me that we were 
constantly at the center of a great hollow globe. This 
globe seemed to be bounded by a shell as black as night, 
thickly studded with innumerable glittering points of 
light and splashed over with almost countless patches 
of luminous clouds of a fleecy whiteness. 

These little wanderers of the sky appeared to be 
surging through a hole in this great shell, known in 
astronomy as the ^'radiant point,'' passing around us 
on semi-circles, and disappearing through a hole on 
the opposite side of the hollow globe. In other words, 
they seemed to enter the celestial sphere at one of 
its poles, to trace its meridians, and to pass out and 
from sight through the opposite pole. But this par- 
ticular maneuver common to all the meteoric bodies 
was an optical illusion — ^they were moving in essen- 
tially parallel lines. On this same principle the rail- 
ings of a car-line appear to converge to a point both 
ways as one looks up and down the track. The same 
illusion is seen, if looking upward, we watch snow- 
flakes falling during a calm. Those coming directly 
toward our eyes seem to be motionless, and the rest to 
separate from them in diverging lines. 

I was constantly bewildered and distressed by the 
fact that I was not able by means of any visible and 
tangible objects in the sky to locate myself. Every- 
thing about us was direction, yet not any course along 
which I fixed my gaze seemed to be any one of the 



76 TO THE MOON AND 

points of the compass nor any other absolute course 
with which I had ever been familiar on earth. 

When the atmosphere was free from clouds and 
vapor, I could look back to earth and readily and easily 
get the lay of the continents, and thereby determine 
the points of the compass ; but after they had thus 
been located, they did not often seem to be the direc- 
tions they really were. And if the cardinal points as 
indicated by the positions of the continents happened 
for a moment to appear real, the very instant I directed 
my gaze away from earth and into the heavens, I was 
again at sea as to positive knowledge and consciousness 
of absolute directions. 

Every thing in the visible universe seemed to readily 
adjust itself to my imagination. 

Sometimes I tried to fancy some particular direction 
along an imaginary horizontal plain to be some partic- 
ular point of the compass ; and on looking in the direc- 
tion of the earth for the verification of my fancy, it 
would appear that this old ball had suddenly revolved 
from one-fourth to one-half around upon one of her 
imaginary equatorial diameters and that the course 
under consideration was at variance with that of the 
compass by from 90° to 180''. 

I sometimes directed my eyes toward some star of 
the first or of the second magnitude and tried to imag- 
ine the course to be some particular direction with 
which I was familiar on earth, and frequently after a 
few seconds, the course would seem to be the direction 
I supposed it to be; but the very moment I imagined 
the course to be some other direction, the whole stellar 
world would at once apparently adjust itself to my 
fancy. And usually as often as I repeated this experi- 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 77 

ment, the celestial vault would appear to revolve in the 
twinkling of an eye upon the celestial diameter that 
would most readily accommodate it to my imagination. 

My attention was first directed to this strange phe- 
nomenon when we were in the shoal of meteoric stones. 
On one occasion I was standing at one of the observa- 
tion windows steadily peering through the pane away 
on an imaginary horizontal plain at the wee planets as 
they seemed to be surging through a hole in the great 
hollow shell that inclosed us, and diverging to pass 
around us on every side. I just imagined what a 
pretty, awe-inspiring sight it would be if the radiant 
point were directly over head ; and at that very instant 
the whole concave of the sky adapted itself to my 
fancy, and then the ship appeared to be gently resting 
upon its side, and the swarm of little worlds seemed 
to be entering the hollow sphere at the zenith and fall- 
ing rapidly down the sky on all sides of us in the man- 
ner of rain drops chasing one another down the ribs of 
an umbrella spread above me. 

These miniature worlds often seemed to cease sud- 
denly their flight and at the same moment our craft 
appeared to sheer off in the direction of the radiant 
point, at which they were apparently emanating, at the 
speed of meteors. After a few seconds the craft would 
as suddenly seem to stop, and the meteoric stones to 
simultaneously take up their flight again. You wit- 
nessed a similar phenomenon when you fancied your 
train was moving, while it was merely another train 
on a side track beginning to move in the opposite 
direction. 

I became so confused by these and similar perplex- 
ing experiences that much of the time during the first 



78 TO THE MOON AND 

transit I sat with my eyes closed and with my face 
resting in my hands to get such relief as the attitude 
might afford. A great deal of the time I was very 
much depressed in spirit, but this fact I did not voice 
to any one, nor did I allow my conduct at any time to 
betray my feelings ; but, on the contrary, I tried all the 
while to manifest a cheerful spirit. 

It has been said that if a person were subjected for 
a sufficient length of time to absolute solitude, he would 
become insane, and I feel sure that there would be at 
least a strong tendency for the mind, subjected to such 
conditions, to become unbalanced. And for one not to 
be in close and intimate relations for any considerable 
length of time with both animate and inanimate nature 
as they appear on earth, produces about the same im- 
mediate influences on the mind and leads directly to 
the same final results. 

Our great distance from the earth had completely 
severed us from all existence. Besides, our surround- 
ings were constantly the same except that the comets, 
the planets, and the satellites were slowly shifting their 
relative positions. And although there was inter- 
mingled with our environments much of sublime beauty 
to stimulate to the highest degree the imagination and 
to induce wholesome solemn thought, our great distance 
from home and the monotony throughout the voyage 
added much to the loneliness of the situation. 

Some people look with grudging or invidious eyes 
upon me because the opportunity to go on this wonder- 
ful expedition came my way. Well, it was, in a sense, 
a delightful trip; but the time during which we were 
making the first transit was the bluest days I ever ex- 




FIG. 23. RING NEBULA IN LYRA. 

(^Yerkes Observatory.) 





^ 


■^ 


"^ 


■ 


^r^*^ 








] 








i » 


i 


^^kv^^^^^^^t 








A 


^^B^^i^^ 


»^ 






^ 




^ 


^ 


^^^^^|fl 


1 



I 



FIG. 25. PICTURE MAP OF THE MOON. 

^'Whoop-ee! Dis look at dat moon dis mawnin!" exclaimed 
Dick in his usual gay humor and with intense surprise. "White 
folks, she sho had de small-pox; her face is dis as speckled all 
over wid 'em spots as a pea-cock's tail is wid eyes." 

(.Nasmyth's "Moon.") 




FIG. 27. MOON FIVE DAYS OLD. 

This picture shows the Moon as it appeared to the inhabitants 
of the earth the day of our departure for the moon, and also 
at the time we reached destination. 

(Yerkes Observatory.) 




FIG. 28. PROF. GALVIN EQUIPPED FOR A TRAMP 
AND A CLIMB AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. 

(The Pictorial News Co.) 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 79 

perienced. To describe my feelings at any time dur- 
ing this period is beyond the reach of words. 

After surmounting the atmosphere of the earth, we 
were no longer in a temperate clime, nor were we 
gently floating through a golden depth of light. The 
degree of cold on the outside was intense, and there 
was no diffused light nor any such appearance as that 
which we ordinarily call daylight. 

When I looked at the sun, I saw it as a blinding ball 
of fire, but the sky everjrwhere was black and the stara 
visible in every direction, just as if it were night. 

The planets on which the sun's rays fell reflected 
their physical features in a way that w^as astonishing, 
yet but little light seemed to inten^ene between them 
and us ; and a thick gloom seemed to gather about the 
ship, that reminded me, somewhat, of 'Tndian Sum- 
mer'' under a moon-lit sky. 

This appearance w^as due to the absence of air, for 
it is this that diffuses or spreads the sun's light around 
us, when we are on earth, and hides the stars in day- 
time by producing an atmospheric illumination. This 
illumination has a blue color, when we look skyward, 
because it is the short, blue waves of light that are 
most scattered by the atmosphere. 

Throughout the transit I longed to trace once more 
the boundaries of my earthly possessions, to survey 
with my eyes again a beautiful landscape with its val- 
leys, streams and reliefs, and with all its natural flora 
and domesticated fauna, overspread by a sky of azure 
blue. I eagerly desired also to hear once more the 
sylvan notes of an endless variety of v/ild-birds coming 
from all the groves, to hearken to the trumpeting of 



80 TO THE MOON AND 

the night-storm, and to listen to the busy hum of in- 
dustry; but these were not mine to enjoy. 

At this time we were almost seventy thousand miles 
from home, and therefore every thing that lends beauty 
and tenderness to an earthly landscape was gone; I 
was unable to determine in what direction we were 
going, or v/hether we were moving at all ; Capt. Ewald 
and Prof. Galvan were very irritable men and often 
disputed fiercely with each other and with other pro- 
motors of this enterprise; the thermometers on the 
outside registered the temperature at almost 300° 
centigrade, below the freezing point of water; the ship 
was popping under a tremendous strain due to the ex- 
treme degree of cold on the outside, and seemed to be 
in a rack all over. 

All these things together with the perplexing expe- 
riences, the gloaming darkness that hovered around, 
and the dreadful silence that constantly prevailed made 
me feel that life was almost unbearable. 

I felt a decided tendency to become reckless, or even 
desperate, and entertained grave fears that if the 
opportunity v/ere to present itself, I might be tempted 
to leap wildly to my death into the boundless void. 

But these unpleasant experiences were not without 
good fruits. Throughout the voyage, and especially 
during the time of the first transit, I lived a life that 
had in it more than its usual intensity, as did also the 
rest of the party; and each mind by its own quickened 
thought contributed to the energy of the general 
thought, and then the general thought reverted in a 
way to give volume and vitality to the thought of each 
individual. 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 81 

I now feel that life is better worth the living than if 
I had not made the voyage. Such experiences reach 
us at points in our souls where we have not hitherto 
been alive, add tension to our conception of life, and 
discover ourselves to ourselves, and in this way prac- 
tically increase our own aggregate. The frightful, the 
awful, and even the horrible may prove as inspiring 
as the beautiful; and one may, imaginatively at least, 
discover in a densely black night that which is invisible 
in sunshine. 



CHAPTER Xm 

LOOKING FARTHER TOWARDS 
INFINITY 

Late on the evening of Dec. 1, we were eighty thou- 
sand miles from the earth, or one-third the way to our 
destination. Tangents drawn from the point in space 
designated by the position of our ship to points in the 
earth's circumference diverged 5"". In other words the 
earth presented a disk one hundred times greater than 
that of the full moon as seen from the earth. 

About twelve o'clock, noon, on Dec. 7, we completed 
half the journey. At this time the measure of the 
earth by means of tangents was 4''. This is equiva- 
lent to saying that forty-five such disks as she pre- 
sented, placed edge to edge, would span the arch of the 
sky. The earth now appeared as a great golden-col- 
ored disk ten feet in diameter and bounded around by 
a pale-blue border four inches broad. 

The moon was almost on the opposite side of the 
earth from us, was approximately one hundred and 
twenty thousand miles farther from us than when we 
began the journey, and was approaching her last quar- 
ter. She appeared about the size of a large orange as 
she stood out in high relief and in sharp detail against 

82 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 83 

a sky of inky blackness, and the dark areas on her sur- 
face were hardly visible to the unaided eye. 

In the meantime we had directed our gaze farther 
towards infinity. 

Prof. Galvan pointed out Neptune and informed us 
that it was the most distant planet of which we have 
any knowledge. From the earth it is not visible to 
the naked eye; but when seen through a large tele- 
scope, it appears as a star of the eighth magnitude. 

"How large," inquired Mr. Vanderlip, *'is the planet 
Neptune?" 

"Neptune has a diameter of thirty-five thousand 
miles,'' responded Prof. Galvan, "and a volume one 
hundred times as great as that of the earth.'' 

"You will never be able to convince me that Neptune 
is a thing of such magnitudes," interrupted Mr. Ship- 
ley, "for when viev/ed through the large telescope, it 
appears to be no larger than a kernel of com." 

"The magnitudes attributed to this planet are with- 
in the bounds of reason," answered Prof. Galvan, "when 
its immense distance from us is properly considered 
in the reckoning." 

"How great is the distance," asked Mr. Waite, "to 
the planet Neptune?" 

"I will give you the necessary data," said Prof. Gal- 
van, "and you may make the estimate for yourself. A 
train running at the speed of sixty miles an hour, day 
and night, without stopping," he continued, "would re- 
quire five thousand and fifty-five years to complete the 
journey to this remote orb." 

Everybody then got busy with pencils and paper, 
and within thirty minutes the estimate was completed, 



84 TO THE MOON AND 

and the true distance announced at two billion and 
eight hundred million miles. 

At first these figures appear almost incredible; yet 
the path of the great comet of 1811 extends forty bil- 
lions of miles beyond this far-away sentinel at the out- 
post of the planetary system, a distance so great that 
in spite of the comet's immense speed along its path, 
it has been authoritatively scheduled to return in not 
less than thirty centuries. And when this comet has 
reached its aphelion distance which is fourteen times 
as great as that of the planet Neptune, the same heav- 
ens will bend above it, that bend above us here on 
earth. 

In other words, beyond the remotest point in this 
mighty orbit there is a vast chasm which is so im- 
mense that figures applied to it are meaningless ; yet, 
beyond these depths so profound that to us they are 
limitless, the sky is ablaze with jewels — ^the stars glit- 
tering with the green of the emerald, the blue of the 
amethyst, and the red of the garnet. 

In case two or more stars happen to lie very nearly 
in the same straight line from the observer's view- 
point, though at immense distances from each other, 
their light blends and they appear to the naked eye as 
a single star. Many stars of this kind have been found 
to be in some way physically connected and form 
binary, triple, and even septuple systems according to 
the number of stars composing the separate groups. 

We saw many groups of stars of this class during 
the voyage. And the individual members composing 
each system revolve in elliptical paths about their com- 
mon center of gravity and often have different colors 
presented in all their richness and beauty, some of 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 85 

which are combinations of colors complementary to 
each other. Here, is a blood-red star with a green 
companion ; there, an orange and a blue sun ; and yon- 
der, a yellow and a purple one. And truly I saw in 
the stars every color seen in the rainbow of the sky 
and every tint that blooms in the flowers on earth. 

Another interesting class of objects was that of the 
star clusters of which there are thousands. 

One particular group which I saw in the Toucan is 
compact in the center, where it is of an orange-red 
color, while the exterior is composed of purely white 
stars, making a border of beautiful contrast. 

While my gaze was fixed upon this beautiful archi« 
pelago of worlds, I felt as if I were gazing into a great 
casket of precious gems. 

Beyond the star clusters are numerous, faint, misty 
objects which resemble specks of luminous clouds. 
These are called nebulae and differ from the star clus- 
ters in not being resolvable into separate stars when 
viewed through the telescope. 

From our view point at this time many of the ne- 
bulae were visible to the unaided eye ; and the telescope 
revealed thousands, many of which are not, perhaps, 
known to astronomical science. 

Among the most conspicuous and beautiful of this 
class of objects are the following: the Great Nebula 
in Andromeda, the Spiral Nebula in Canes Venatica, 
the Magellanic Clouds, the Crab Nebula in Taurus, the 
Trifid Nebula in Sagitarius, the Net-Work Nebula in 
Cygnus, the Green Nebula in Orion, the Ring Nebula 
in Lyra, and the Dumb-bell Nebula in Vulpecula. 

The distances to the nebulae surpass our comprehen- 
sion. Prof. Monahan informed us that a ray of light, 



86 TO THE MOON AND 

which travels at the rate of almost two hundred thou- 
sand miles a second, would require, according to some 
astronomers, eight hundred thousand years to span the 
gulf that intervenes. Although we were thousands of 
miles away from the earth, these startling figures made 
me feel that we had not yet left home. I was not able 
to comprehend even the smallest part of such a magni- 
tude, yet the statement, which hinted at it, taught me 
something, at least, of the limitless expanse of that 
space in which God is working the mysterious problems 
of creation. 

At the nebulae I gazed long and wonderingly. I 
could conceive of nothing in all the visible universe 
that was more suggestive of the magnificence and the 
immensity of creation than they. If a telescope of 
sufficient magnifying power were directed at any one 
of the nebulae, if would, no doubt, reveal the fact that 
each little patch of smoke is a host of suns as large or 
even larger than our own, which would appear as so 
many electric sparks fixed in the concave of the sky, 
scintillating with different colors like diamonds and 
quivering like things of life. 

The planets, the satellites, the meteors and the com- 
ets all about us, which we were able to count by thou- 
sands, were constantly shifting their positions; but 
over all shone the eternal stars, each with its place so 
accurately marked that to the astronomers among our 
number no deception was possible. The stars have 
been called the "landmarks of the universe." They 
seem to be placed in the heavens by the Creator, not 
alone to elevate our thoughts and to expand our con- 
ception of the infinite and the eternal, but to afford us 
among the constant fluctuations of our own earth some- 
thing unchangeable and abiding. 




FIG. 29. STAR CLOUD IX SAGITARIUS. 

Beyond the aphelion distance of the remotest cometary obrit 
belonging to the solar system is a vast chasm which is so im- 
mense that figures applied to it are meaningless; yet, beyond 
these depths so profound that to us they are limitless, the sky 
is ablaze with jewels. 

(Yerkes Observatory.^ 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 87 

In short, the solar system taken together with the 
stars, the star-clusters, and the nebulae presented be- 
fore us a scene that was to me at once and constantly 
the symbol and fact of majesty. In the presence of all 
this weird and wondrous beauty the tenderest senti- 
ments are aroused in the souL A feeling of awe and 
reverence, and of softened melancholy mingled with 
the thought of God, comes over one and awakens with- 
in him his better nature. 

But the appalling sense of trackless space, which 
the immeasureable stretches of multiplied trillions of 
miles to those distant suns inspires in the soul, at times 
completely overwhelmed me with suggestions of the 
Infinite One until no human language seemed appro- 
priate or competent to give expression unless it shaped 
itself in prayer. 

Truly I felt like I had come into communion with 
another life. Those far-off lights seemed to me to be 
full of meaning and looked inquiringly down upon us ; 
and although I could not quite read and grasp their 
messages, I did realize that the whole foreshadowed 
for man a great and glorious future; and my soul 
bowed in humble submission and reverence to the 
Creator and Governor of all things, and more strongly 
than ever before asserted its immortality* 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE LIMIT OF THE VOYAGE 
REACHED 

On the morning of Dec. 16, the undivided and ardent 
interest that most of us had, up to this time, been 
taking in the stellar world in general began to wane 
rapidly and to give place to a new field of thought. 

The moon was surely coming our way and rapidly 
completing her revolution around the earth for that 
lunar month. At thirty-five minutes past eight o'clock 
p. m. of this same day the moon was due to be at her 
new, and we were scheduled to reach destination on 
Dec. 21, five days after new moon. 

Every one had begun to realize that the time was 
right at hand when he would experience what it is to 
be a lunarian. I do not know how others felt about 
the attempt at landing, but as for myself, I experienced 
a deep, and strange sense of fear. I felt sure that such 
a feat would necessarily be attended by great hazard. 

During most of the last five days next preceding our 
arrival at destination I sat gazing anxiously and hope- 
fully at the moon as she came in her heavy swing 
around the curve of her orbit. 

Time went on ; and at seven o'clock a. m. on Dec. 18, 
we found ourselves, in spite of eternal vigilance, in 

88 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 89 

another shower of meteoric bodies, and our lives again 
in great peril. About nine o'clock p. m. on Dec. 20, the 
last of the more prominent of this shoal went by, to 
the exceeding great joy of those v/ho were able to 
realize the hazardous position in which these flying 
missiles placed us. Prof. Monahan said this last swarm 
consisted of the laggards of the first and only shoal of 
little worlds we had been in. 

At two o'clock p. m. on Dec. 19, the moon appeared 
to be the same size as the earth, was about sixty-five 
thousand miles away, and coming almost directly to- 
ward us. From this time on she rapidly became the 
most conspicuous object in the heavens and took on 
the uneven and rugged appearance of a world like our 
own, as she came sweeping along through space at a 
speed of more than two thousand miles an hour. 

Although we were approaching the moon from her 
darkened hemisphere, I was able even at this great dis- 
tance to perceive by means of a thread of light about 
her border her entire outline and to discern the cavi- 
ties and the elevations of almost every size and order 
upon her surface which presented a cold, blue, and 
flinty appearance — a rather uninviting abode for man, 
I thought. And truly I was surprised to discover that 
I could discern objects on the moon's surface as readily 
by means of refracted light as by direct light. 

Almost before I was aware the twenty-first of 
December came, the day on which we had exi)ected and 
arranged to reach destination. 

'"We have reached the point of equilibrium," said the 
captain at four o'clock, *'and we must land today or 
never." 



90 TO THE MOON AND 

In spite of the fact that these words were, in a sense, 
consoling, this utterance caused the loss of self-posses- 
sion in the cases of many and thereby threw them into 
a state of confusion. As a result they walked ner- 
vously about the room, thronged about the observation 
windows, and closely watched every movement of the 
three men who held our destiny in their hands. 

At seven o'clock a. m. the moon was only fifteen 
thousand miles av/ay, was rapidly approaching us, and 
was due to pass the point where our line of travel in- 
tersected the moon's path, about half past one o'clock 
in the afternoon. 

Capt. Ewald and Profs. Monahan, Galvan and Rider 
had been almost constantly at the steering wheel since 
four o'clock that morning, appeared to be somewhat 
confused, and in undertones but in a spirited manner 
seemed to be discussing something of a serious nature. 

During these earlier hours of the morning the craft 
had been violently tilting and running in a jerky man- 
ner. Throughout all this time I asked no question, 
entertained grave fears that something had gone seri- 
ously wrong with the running gear of the ship, and 
silently sat in dreadful suspense. 

The reader will, no doubt, readily call to mind the 
fact stated at the outset, that one of the well-deserved 
merits of Capt. Ewald's invention, the running gear of 
the ship, is its power, when the parts are properly ad- 
justed, to neutralize or to destroy the force of attrac- 
tion so that no heavenly body can possibly exert any 
influence upon the ship. 

And, about eight o'clock I was informed that the 
captain, in order to liberate the universal power of 
attraction, had deranged the machinery by a displace- 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 91 

ment of its parts, which had throughout the transit 
warded off attractive influences, gauged the ship to a 
uniform speed and held it to a fixed course. 

The prime object in freeing this great universal force 
in nature just at this particular time was to render the 
conditions possible and favorable for the moon to exert 
her utmost attractive influence upon the ship and 
thereby to give it greatly-increased speed in the direc- 
tion of destination. 

It was clearly manifest to all that it would be neces- 
sary for the ship to acquire even a greater speed than 
that of the moon in her orbit, otherwise it would be 
utterly impossible to effect a landing. 

As a result of this wise plan suggested and urged by 
Profs. Monahan and Galvan, and of Capt. Ewald and 
Prof. Rider's skillful operation of the machinerjr, the 
ship fell at a terrific speed in the direction of the moon, 
with more or less check on it ; and this is the explana- 
tion of the ship's unsteady movements during the 
earlier hours of the morning. 

Partly by the positive assurance of the best authori- 
ties on board the ship that we might reasonably ex- 
pect a safe approach to the limit of our journey, and 
in part by the attractive appearance of the moon's phy- 
sical features just at this particular time, I uncon- 
sciously dismissed from my mind the main burden of 
my dark forebodings and throughout the remainder of 
the voyage gave undisturbed attention and study to 
the wonderful relief map of the moon's disk as she 
loomed up in pretty sharp detail by refracted light. 

Up to this time my associations with those scholarly 
and daring scientists had been most pleasant, and 
within a certain sphere, highly profitable ; and the sub- 



92 



TO THE MOON AND 



lime and magnificent views of the heavens that had 
constantly been before us had already given me a 
memorable realization of the insignificance of man and 
his works, and in short, of all earthly things, except so 
far as they are related to nature and to God. 



East \ 


7 

7 West 







FIG. 24. DIRECTIONS ON THE PLATES. 

The directions on the plates shown in this work are exactly 
the opposite of those found on the maps in our geographies. See 
the accompanying diagram. 



Everybody now became joyous and conversation 
opened up lively, a thing very unusual heretofore. 

Some wondered and questioned if the moon v/ere in- 
habited by intelligent beings, and if so, w^hat kind of 
looking creatures the Selenites were. Others won- 
dered and questioned if those imaginary beings were 
a sin-stricken people like the inhabitants of earth, and 
if so, whether there were among their number soldiers 
of the cross enlisting to bear to those benighted souls 
of their fellow beings the tidings of salvation. 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 



93 






FIG. 26. KEY MAP 


OF 


POINTS WE VISITED. 


1. 


Archemides. 




11. 


The Point of Arrival on, 


2. 

3. 

4. 
5. 
6. 


The Unnamed, Y-shaped 
Mountain Group. 


12. 


and Departure from the 
Moon. 

The Apennine Mountains. 


Plato. 

The Alps Mountains. 

The Alpine Valley. 




13. 
14. 
15. 


Eratosthenes. 

Copernicus. 

Murus Rectus or the 
^'Straight Wall." 


7. 


Aristoteles. 




16. 


Tycho. 


8. 


Eudoxus. 




17. 


Longomont anus . 


9. 


Aristillus. 




18. 


Clavius, or Playfair. 


10. 


Autrolycus. 




19. 


Newton. 



94 



TO THE MOON AND 



20. 


Schiller. 






32. 


Fernurius. 


21, 


Schickard. 






33. 


Piccolomini. 


22. 


Gassendi. 






34. 


The Altia Mountains, 


23. 


Kepler. 






35. 


Catherina. 


24. 


Aristarchus. 






36. 


Cyrillus. 


25. 


Heroditns. 






37. 


Theophilus. 


26. 


Grimaldi. 






38. 


Hyginus. 


27. 


Mare Crisium or the 


Sea 


39. 


Menelaus. 




of Crises. 






40. 


Bessel. 


28. 


Palus Scmnii 


and Proclus. 


41. 


Linne. 


29. 


Lan^enus. 






42. 


The Keamus Mountains. 


30. 


VendGlinus. 






43. 


Mont Blanc. 


31. 


Petavia. 






44. 


The Teneriff Peaks. 



In fact there was among our number all manner of 
speculation concerning the things we would see and ex- 
perience when we reached destination. 

Dick Prouty, the colored man, was certainly the most 
joyous soul I ever saw. He did not seem to realize 
what, in the nature of perils, we were yet liable to en- 
counter even though we should effect the landing suc- 
cessfully. He was in ecstacies over the thought of 
having once more a solid foundation on which to place 
his feet, and was constantly making pert and apt re- 
marks and breaking into loud and hearty laughter. 

I was able at this time to discover readily and easily 
that a very large part of the moon's visible hemisphere 
is almost solidly pitted over with crater-like hollows of 
all sizes. 

At eleven o'clock Capt. Ewald instructed Dick Prouty 
not to prepare the noon meal until after the landing 
had been made. Prof. Galvan then called the colored 
man to the observation window to take a view of the 










■^1^^ 






FIG. 30 



(Nasmyth's "Moon.") 



FIG. 30. THE APENNINE MOUNTAINS, ARCHEMIDES, 
AND SURROUNDINGS. 

The great, high-land system in the upper part of the picture 
is the Apennines. The large crater in the upper, right-hand 
corner is Eratosthenes. The three large crater rings just be- 
neath the center, in the order of their sizes, from the largest to 
the smallest, are Archemides, Aristillus, and Autorolycus. The 
smaller system of high-lands near the center of the picture and 
adjacent to the wall of Archemides is the Wolf Mountains. 

Note the huge clefts extending about over the surface, in 
various directions. 

The small, jet-black, circle lying midway between Archemides 
and the Apennines marks the spot of our arrival on, and de- 
parture from, the Moon. 

Locate this region in Figs. 25 and 32. Also see Figs. 34, 35, 
and 39. 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 95 

moon at short range, at which he gazed steadily for 
some time. 

**What do you think of it, Dick?" inquired Prof* 
Galvan. 

"Whoop-ee! Dis look at dat moon dis mawnin!" ex- 
claimed Dick in his usual gay humor and with intense 
surprise. *'White folks, she sho had de small-pox; her 
face is dis as speckled all over wid 'em spots as a pea- 
cock's tail is wid eyes." 

At t^velve o'clock the moon w^as less than five thou- 
sand miles away, was moving almost directly toward 
us at the speed of nearly forty miles a minute, and 
presented a magnificent view of her massive mountain 
systems, her extensive lava seas, and her great walled 
plains ; and in spite of the fact that she was charging 
upon us through the heavens at a speed and with a 
force indicating that behind her was all the power in 
the universe, her approach was as silent as the grave. 

Besides the moon's more prominent physical features 
referred to in the foregoing paragraph there were now 
plainly to be seen thousands of smaller cavities and 
elevations of all shapes and degrees of irregularity. 

More than anything else to which I can compare 
them, they resemible great rain pits in deep, dry dust^ 
or the momentary cavities that are formed on the sur- 
face of thick, boiling soap when bubbles burst. 

At half past one o'clock p. m. the center of the moon 
was at the point at which the straight path of the ship 
intersected her orbit, and the craft was about one 
thousand miles from her surface. 

At two o'clock the moon had moved from this point 
along her orbit one thousand and two hundred miles, 
or a little more than half her diameter, and had gone 
by us. 



96 TO THE MOON AND 

I felt sure we had lost our opportunity of catching 
this little world in her wild flight, and thereby had been 
deprived of ever knowing anything more about her 
strange and rugged beauty of which we had gotten 
only a glimpse. 

But it exists as a fact in nature that an object like 
our ship, set free to be acted upon by a powerful at- 
tracting body like the earth or the moon, will acquire 
within a few minutes a much greater speed in its de- 
scent than that of the planet itself in its orbit, which 
at the time is exerting the influence. 

Accordingly at the opportune time Capt. Ewald and 
the astronomers, by the displacement of the parts of 
the ship's running gear, liberated or set free for the 
last time the universal attractive forces in nature in 
order that the moon might exert her utmost influence 
upon the ship and thereby give it great and steadily- 
increasing velocity in the direction of destination. 

And while the ship's speed continued to increase rap- 
idly according to the law of falling bodies, the captain 
slued the craft on a comparatively short curve and at 
the same moment applied all the power possible from 
within to give it the course and the speed of the moon 
in her orbit. This he easily did by a skillful adjust- 
ment and management of the ship's running gear. 
This great feat sent our craft racing side by side with 
the moon at a distance of two hundred and fifty miles 
from her surface, a relative position which enabled us 
to descend to the surface at leisure ; for to all appear- 
ances, and practically, too, the moon was then station- 
ary with respect to the ship. 

This extraordinary act of skill on the part of Capt. 
Ewald and Profs. Monahan and Gal van was the exploit 
that most of us feared would end in disaster. 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 97 

Finally at half past two o'clock p. m. on this same 
day, Dec. 21, 1914, after a most wonderful but perilous 
voyage of twenty-nine days, four hours, and thirty 
minutes, our craft, noticeably scanned in a number of 
places by small, flying missiles, gently descended to 
the surface at a point near the center of a broad, and 
comparatively level valley between the foothills of 
two picturesque mountain systems, the Apennines on 
the east side of us, and the Wolf Mountains on the 
west. (See Figs. 32, 34, and 35.) 

Just as the ship settled down Dick Prouty grinned, 
gave his head a slight, quick jerk, and broke the silence 
in the following utterance. 

"A bi-plane is a tame thing compared wid dis trick 
she's you born." 

Everybody else stood breathless and looked strangely 
and pleasingly at one another, but for some little time 
no one spoke a word. 



CHAPTER XV 

OUR THANKSGIVING AND OUR 
BATTLE WITH THE ELEMENTS 

When we realized that our ship was actually in con- 
tact with the surface of the moon, every heart swelled 
with emotion; and even as Noah's first act after com- 
ing out of the ark was to sacrifice to the Lord, and as 
Columbus, when he first set foot on the land of the 
New World, knelt, kissed the earth, and offered thanks 
to the Creator, so we were all ready, even before the 
door of our craft was opened, to join heartily with the 
Rev. Bryan Merritt in prayer as he poured out his soul 
to Almighty God in the following words : 

''0 thou great God of the Universe, at whose com- 
mand all these splendid worlds came into existence, 
whose providence holds them in their courses and 
marks their destinies, how our hearts overflow with 
gratitude and thanksgiving to thee, that amidst all this 
immensity thy loving care can extend, and has ex- 
tended, even to such insignificant creatures as we. 
Thou hast preserved our lives through the dangers of 
a voyage never before undertaken by mortal men, and 
brought us safe to luna fimia. 

"Now, our gracious Preserver, we know not what 
perils may yet lie in our pathway, so we commit our- 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 99 

selves into thy merciful keeping, and trust thee still to 
guide and to lead us safely on our Journey over the 
moon's surface, and back again to our loved ones in the 
far-away world from which we came. 

"Nay, more, we trust our lives into thy keeping, and 
when the final great voyage from Time to Eternity 
shall be made ; we shall not fear. In the name of our 
loving Saviour receive our thanksgiving and hear our 
petitions — Amen." 

Until five o'clock of this afternoon the massive steel 
door of the craft remained closed, locked, and sealed. 

During this time Capt. Ewald, Dr. Wharton, and 
Profs. Monahan, Galvan, and Rider were aside to them- 
selves engaged in a private consultation, while the rest 
of us stood at the observation windows gazing out upon 
the arid, rocky plain about us and at the jagged cliffs 
of the foothills in the distance. The outside looked like 
a deathtrap. 

At the private meeting of the promoters of this en- 
terprise Dr. Wharton advised and commanded that no 
one be allowed to pass out into the open until a thor- 
ough investigation had been made to determine v/hether 
the conditions on the outside were favorable to such a 
venture. 

A careful and thorough test revealed the fact that 
there is an atmosphere surrounding the moon and that 
it is very highly rarefied and stands at a great altitude. 

On forcing a sufficient quantity of the air into one of 
the chambers in the dome of the ship to indicate a bar- 
ometric pressure equal to that of the earth's atmos- 
phere at the level of the sea and applying a chemical 
test it was found to contain exactly the same elements 
in about the same proportion as the atmosphere of the 
earth, a thing very encouraging to us. 



100 TO THE MOON AND 

Finally after due deliberation and experimentation 
Dr. Wharton and others advised that those of us who 
felt inclined to want to experiment with the environ- 
ments might pass to the outside. 

Five of us volunteered to make this venture and were 
at once ushered into the antechamber. Prof. Pumell 
quickly pumped most of the air from this vestibule in 
order to relieve the door from part of the tremendous 
atmospheric pressure from within, and then by means 
of strong and heavy machinery turned the lock and 
broke the seal. 

Dr. Wharton then ordered us to pass out and charged 
us particularly not to go many steps from the door un- 
til permitted so to do. This earnest injunction was a 
precaution against oxygen starvation and freezing to 
death, and it was a wise and timely command we 
learned by experience. 

Then for the first time since the hour of our depar- 
ture for the moon on November 22, and to the extreme 
joy of all, the door of the craft swung ajar and we 
slowly and cautiously filed out into a strange and for- 
eign world. 

I first glanced my eyes at the heavens above us and 
then looked rapidly about us on every side in wonder 
and astonishment. It was the most desolate, and at the 
same time the most strangely beautiful world that God 
in his wisdom has ever seen proper to create — ^more 
charming in her rugged relief than it is possible for 
even the most imaginative mind to conceive of. 

By the time I had gotten a fairly good glimpse of the 
wonderful landscape about us in its picturesque beauty 
made plainly visible in the vicinity of the ship by the 
light of the sun reflected by the earth, my hands, face, 
and neck felt as if they were being gently but rapidly 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 101 

pricked by millions of fine cambric needles with deli- 
cate points, and my pulse had increased to more than 
one hundred and twenty beats to the minute. In an- 
other moment I was rapidly becoming dizzy and grow- 
ing sick. 

This was the experience of everyone who ventured 
out. And discovering we were not just at this time 
equipped for withstanding the intense cold registered 
at more than 250 degrees Centigrade, below the freez- 
ing point of water and an atmosphere many times more 
highly attenuated than that to which we had been ac- 
customed on earth, we retreated in haste to the refuge 
of the ship. 

Although the thermometer registered the tempera- 
ture at a degree somewhat above that which uniformly 
prevailed throughout the transit, our suffering from 
the extreme cold alone during the short time we were 
exposed to the elements was almost beyond endurance. 
I shivered with cold so frightful that no winter expe- 
rience I had ever before had could give any idea of its 
intensity, nor can the extreme cold that polar explorers 
have ever experienced be likened unto that of this lunar 
night. 

Within a very short time after returning to the ship 
we fully recovered from the ill effects of our exposure 
to the surroundings and the new conditions of things 
in general on the outside. 

It was not an intense surprise to the promoters of 
this enterprise to find such a degree of cold and an at- 
mosphere of such great tenuity on our satellite. This 
state of things they rather expected and made adequate 
preparations to meet successfully, if necessary. The 
inferior size and density of the moon and the long lunar 



102 TO THE MOON AND 

nights would very naturally lead speculative scientists 
to such a conclusion. 

The main fortification against the intense cold and 
the drawn-out state of the air with which we were 
forced to battle was the copper helmet referred to 
briefly in the fourth chapter, which we wore only when 
away from the ship on exploring expeditions and which 
served as a safe-guard against freezing to death and 
oxygen starvation. 

This helmet is rather large and clumsy and resem- 
bles, somewhat, the kind of hat usually worn by city 
policemen while on duty. 

It comes down loosely over the head and the neck and 
attaches to a heavy, loose, closely-woven jacket which 
is worn over the arctic suit and which covers the entire 
trunk of the body. 

The inside of the helmet communicates freely with 
a net-work of small, flexible, metal pipes just inside the 
lining of the jacket. 

There is installed on this helmet a miniature air com- 
pressor exactly after the type of the condenser installed 
on the ship, by means of which it can be filled quickly 
and easily with compressed air by the wearer at will. 

There is installed also on this helmet an Edison stor- 
age battery of the submarine-boat type. By means of 
this little battery heat is produced to temper the 
pent-up air for breathing purposes, and light is gener- 
ated which shines out through a large bull's-eye located 
immediately above the observation window in front, 
and thus forms a strong searchlight when exploring 
canyons, gorges, and unfathomable clefts or rents in 
the moon's surface. 

This battery in miniature also rapidly revolves a 
small electric fan located in the top of the helmet, 




FIG. 31 



(Yerkes Observatory.) 



FIG. 31. THE MOON SEVEN DAYS OLD. 

This picture represents the moon as it appeared to observers 
on earth the day we witnessed the lunar sun-rise. 

Within the illuminated hemisphere is a large figure roughly 
resembling the outline of a man standing on his head. This is 
not, however, the ''Man in the Moon." Turn the picture one- 
fourth around to the left, and then the man will appear to be 
lying with his face down-ward. Note that his right leg is larger 
than his left one, and that his nose is prominent and his mouth 
large and protruding. 

The Sea of Serenity forms the man's head, the Sea of Tran- 
quility his body, the Sea of Fecundity his right leg and the Sea 
of Nectar his left leg. And the large, dark detached area 
obscurely circular lying just in front of the man's stomach is the 
Sea of Crises. 

The Palus Putredinus, an embayment of the Sea of Serenity, 
separates the highlands in the lower part of the picture into two 
mountain systems, the Apennines extending upward to the right, 
and the Caucasus extending down-ward to the left. The tw^o 
vulcanoids or craters to the right of the strait and on the "term- 
inator," or border of the advancing sunlight are Aristillus and 
Autrolycus. (See Figs. 30, 32, 34, and 35). The two vulcan- 
oids in the lower part of the picture, under high illumination, 
are Aristoteles and Eudoxus. (See Fig. 38). 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 103 

which keeps the body warm by sending currents of 
warm air around it by means of the system of flexible 
metal pipes located within the lining of the jacket. 

At the same time the potash solution with which the 
battery is charged absorbs the carbon-dioxide given off 
from the system at each exhalation, and an appliance 
generates oxygen, and thus completes a system of air 
purification and rejuvenation. 

Thus equipped we were able to go against any and 
all odds where and when we pleased and stay as long as 
we wished with comparatively little suffering except 
that arising from fatigue due to over-physical exertion. 



CHAPTER XVI 

OUR SECOND VENTURE OUT 

Our real contact with the moon's surface and our 
battle with the elements quickly aroused in everyone 
the true spirit of adventure, and, as a result, it was 
with a considerable degree of impatience that we waited 
for the opportune time to experiment again with our 
environments. 

Just before the second venture out Prof. Monahan 
delivered a thirty-minutes lecture on astronomy. Among 
his utterances on this particular occasion were the fol- 
lowing: 

''Owing to the fact that the moon's axis is almost 
perpendicular to the plain of her orbit, we shall ex- 
perience no change of seasons during our month's so- 
journ on our satellite. And owing to the additional 
fact that the moon rotates exactly once upon her axis 
during the time of her synodic revolution, the earth 
will remain permanently fixed in the sky, the sun will 
rise and set once, only, in a single lunar month, and the 
stars will defile along the sky from east to west about 
13° every twenty-four hours; provided we do not, in 
the meantime, shift our position on the surface. 

"The sun is now about 26° below the eastern horizon, 
is coming up at the rate of 13° each terrestrial day, and 

104 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 105 

therefore will appear in about forty-eight hours from 
the time we reached our destination. This event, the 
sun-rise, will end a lunar night equal in length to four- 
teen of our terrestrial days. And this long night of 
more than arctic cold will be succeeded by a day of 
equal length, during which the sun will pour down his 
rays unmittigated by an atmosphere sufficiently dense 
to temper them; and, as a result, the temperature of 
the rocks will probably rise above that of boiling water 
by the time he reaches his lunar zenith. 

"The volume of the moon is only one-fiftieth, and her 
specific gravity only seven-elevenths, that of the earth ; 
therefore, her mass or weight is a little more than one- 
eightieth that of our planet. As a result of the moon's 
inferior mass, the weight of any object at her surface 
is only one-sixth of what it would be at the surface of 
the earth. The moon's feeble power of attraction is in 
part, if not wholly, the cause of the highly-attenuated 
state of the air enveloping her, and of the great altitude 
at which it stands. 

Under the exciting influences all about us it had not 
until this very moment appeared to any one that we 
ourselves had decreased in weight. Immediately fol- 
lowing the close of the lecture we in turn rapidly 
mounted the scales to test the matter out. 

I found my own weight at this time to be twenty- 
four pounds. The day of our departure for the moon 
my weight was one hundred and forty-four pounds, and 
I was sure that I had not, during our trans-ethereal 
flight, lost any of my avoirdupois. On applying the 
test it was found that every one had fallen away in 
weight in about the same proportion. 



106 TO THE MOON AND 

Finding the moon to be surrounded by an atmosphere 
extremely scant and highly rarefied was at first a great 
disappointment to Profs. Thorsen and Knowlton, the 
aviators. They had expected to have the greatest time 
of their lives at making air flights in our neighboring 
little world, but now their prospects for such a delight- 
ful experience seemed to be defeated. But their hopes 
quickly revived when Profs. Monahan and Galvan as- 
sured them, and all of us, that whatever degree of hin- 
derance might be brought about by an atmosphere of 
great tenuity, due largely to the moon's feeble power 
of attraction, would be wholly offset by the greatly- 
reduced weight to be raised and borne along, due to the 
same cause. 

At the close of the lecture Capt. Ewald commanded 
us to don our gloves, jackets, and copper helmets for a 
tramp and a climb among the foothills of the moun- 
tains. As soon as we were fully equipped, the door of 
the ship again swung ajar and all except Capt. Ewald, 
Dr. Wharton, and Prof. Pumell passed out. 

On this our second venture our equipments were such 
as to enable us to withstand the intense cold and the 
drawn-out state of the atmosphere, and therefore to 
make the conditions highly favorable for giving undis- 
turbed attention and study to our surroundings. 

The sky sparkled with incomparable splendor. Not 
even the glories of a tropical night on earth can give 
any idea of what night on the moon is. 

The heavens above us were as black as a storm cloud 
and studded with millions of stairs which were shooting 
their arrows of light upon us from the remotest depths 
of space. (See Fig. 29). 

Most of the visible hemisphere of the moon was still 
in darkness, it being at that time on the opposite side 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 107 

from the sun, but was considerably illuminated by the 
full earth which appeared about the size of the rim of 
an old-time spinning wheel, showed pretty sharp deline- 
ations of her continents, and shone down upon us al- 
most directly from the zenith with a steady, dull light. 
An earth-lit night on the moon is fourteen times as 
bright as a moon-lit night on earth. In fact the earth 
reflects a sufficient amount of light to enable one to 
see objects, such as large apertures, ragged protuber- 
ances and extensive denticulations on the cliffs, and' 
large boulders on the plains from one to two miles 
away. 

In all directions as far as my eyes could reach the 
valley was v/ell covered with light-brown stones of vari- 
ous sizes and shapes, and a scant, red dust, which ap- 
peared as though they had not in any way been dis- 
turbed since the creation. I could hardly resist calling 
this particular section of the moon's surface Helluland, 
a name signifying the ''land of flat stones.'' And a long 
way off, beyond this barren, desolate, rockstrewn plain 
the summxits of the hills and the mountains illuminated 
by the mellow light reflected by the earth resembled 
''white caps" glistening on the sea. 

Except the great unevenness of the moon's surface 
and the total absence of sand dunes, the general view 
of this lunar landscape about us was much the same 
as that of a very bright moon-lit landscape in the 
Sahara Desert. 

Every^vhere about us the physical features were the 
same — great, lumpy elevations, deep ravines, steep 
declivities, wide-extended plains, and enormous clefts — 
and presented the appearance of a ruined world, a deso- 
late waste. 



108 TO THE MOON AND 

The point at which our ship came to its position of 
rest was on the edge of a prodigious rent in the surface, 
more than two miles in width and sixty miles in length, 
and so deep in most places that it was not possible, 
even by the aid of the search lights in our helmets, to 
see the bottom of it. 

Not a thing did I see about us to indicate in the 
slightest degree the presence of life in any form. 

In short, the landscape view in whatever course I 
directed my gaze was in every respect the symbol of 
complete and perpetual desolation and destruction. 

There was constantly in my ears a roaring sound as 
of high wind a great way off, but this sound was a de- 
lusion — a mere sensation due, most likely, to my ears' 
not being adapted to the drawn-out or rarefied state of 
the air pent up in my helmet. 

Our environments in general, and more especially 
those that appealed to the eyes, induced a feeling of 
loneliness that language cannot express, and caused me 
sometimes to doubt that I was myself and often to 
wonder if I were not merely living in a wild dream. 

We were out on this tramp five hours and twenty 
minutes, walked approximately twelve miles, and at 
one time were three and a half miles from the ship. 



CHAPTER XVII 

HOW WE EMPLOYED TIME UNTIL 
SUN-RISE 

During the two terrestrial days after our arrival at 
destination, while we waited for the sun to rise, we 
employed most of our time in exploration and light 
amusements of various kinds in the vicinity of the ship. 

Scientists tell us that eons ago huge beasts, such as 
the dinosaur, the megatherium, and the proboscidian 
roved through the dark jungles and ambled over the 
broad plains on earth ; and, to back up their assertions 
by evidence, they show us their giant bones found 
in the rock formations of by-gone ages. So as we 
leisurely strolled about in the vicinity of the spot where 
our ship was moored, gazing in w^onder at the huge, 
rough cliffs, into rents of mammoth proportions, and 
about over the rock-strewn valleys and plains, I won- 
dered if back in the misty past huge and strangely 
grotesque creatures like those referred to above zig- 
zagged in clumsy flight over this desolate landscape, 
and thought what a wonderful place we were in for a 
geologist to speculate. 

We climbed eminences, which finally proved to be the 
foothills of two great mountain systems, explored clefts 

109 



110 TO THE MOON AND 

and caverns, and leisurely trailed along what appeared 
to me to be deserted river beds, searching for fossils 
and now and then picking up a curio, and pitching small 
stones into abyssmal rents or chasms. 

Owing to the inferior size and density of our satellite 
gravity at her surface, as previously stated, is much 
weaker than it is at the surface of the earth. We were 
able to raise six hundred pounds as easily as we could 
one hundreds pounds at the earth's surface, and to toss 
about rocks and boulders as if they were pieces of wood 
or cork. 

Our own weight also being reduced in the same 
proportion while our muscular strength remained the 
same, we were able to walk, to run, and to leap in a way 
that was astonishing. And being thus aided by this 
natural state of things and by our equipments briefly 
described in a foregoing chapter, we could withstand 
the intense cold and the great tenuity of the atmos- 
phere, make long journeys on foot, and ascend lofty 
mountains, more easily and with much less fatigue than 
we can on earth. 

In a sense we became as children and vigorously en- 
gaged in all manner of light amusements. Even Capt. 
Ewald, Dr. Wharton, and Prof. Monahan took part with 
the rest of us in foot-racing, jumping, and the game of 
leap-frog. 

It was not a difficult feat for even the clumsiest of us 
to spring upward into the air from ten to fifteen feet, 
jump recklessly from elevated positions into pits and 
chasms from twenty to thirty feet in depth, and spring 
like panthers or kangaroos across gulches from twenty- 




FIG. 32. MOON NINE DAYS OLD. 

This plate represents the moon as it appeared to observers on 
earth at the time of our first biplane flight. It will be observed 
that several new features have appeared beyond the northern 
end of the Apennines. It will be observed also that the contrast 
of hue is less distinct than in Fig. 31. 

(Lick Observatory.) 




FIG. 33. THE LUNAR APENNINES. (IDEAL). 

And they stood forth gaunt and naked, and like the hills, the 
valleys and the planes everywhere, were to all appearances at 
least, totally devoid of both vegetation and animal life. 

(Nasmyth's "Moon.") 




FIG. 34. AN ENLARGED VIEW OF THE APENNINE 
MOUNTAINS, ARCHEMIDES AND SURROUNDINGS. 

This plate shows a part of the Apennine Mountains near the 
Palus Putredinus, an embayment of the Sea of Serenity, where 
it breaks through the mountain wall and connects with the Im- 
brium Sea. 

(Yerkes Observatory.) 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 111 

five to thirty feet broad, without experiencing anything 
of a disagreeable nature more than a slight sense of 
fatigue and shortness of breath. 

Owing to the fact that it was not absolutely safe to 
compress into our helmets a quantity of air sufficient 
to produce a pressure equal to that of the earth's at- 
mosphere to which our bodies up to this time had been 
accustomed, we suffered some from oxygen starvation ; 
and, owing to the additional fact also that the outward 
pressure or the expansive force of the air pent up in 
the tissues and the cavities of our bodies was greater 
than that of the surrounding atmosphere, we suffered 
much from physical injuries due to the same. 

My flesh became so bloated or swollen that at times 
I could scarcely bend my limbs without producing pain ; 
my eyes burnt and my vision became slightly dim ; my 
ears became bunged and often ached intensely ; most of 
the time my appetite was dull ; sometimes blood oozed 
from the pores of my skin in the manner of sweat, but 
not profusely, and my nose frequently bled; my hair 
became dead, dry, and rough and stood out perpendi- 
cular to my cranium ; and on one or two occasions I felt 
as if I were smothering to death. 

Near the close of the second day of our sojourn on 
the moon all the members of our party were more or 
less in this same physical condition and experienced 
similar unpleasant sensations. 

About eleven o'clock a. m. on the morning of Decem- 
ber 23, just as a number of us returned from a tramp 
among the near-by hills, Dr. Wharton came from the 
little chicken coop carrying the remaining four pigeons 
and said : 



112 TO THE MOON AND 

"Boys, here are the rest of your birds; turn them 
loose and let them go." 

We at once took charge of them, carried them to the 
outside, and offered them their freedom. They "shook 
out" their feathers, snapped their eyes vigorously and 
wildly, and gasped for breath. At first they refused to 
fly and clung tightly to our fingers. Finally they dashed 
off as if frightened, each pursuing a different course, 
and zigzagged wildly in their flight. It was with ex- 
treme difficulty that they kept themselves above the 
surface; and, no sooner would they perch, than they 
would dash off again at full speed. 

Within a minute's time they had all disappeared be- 
hind the projecting spurs of the cliffs, and I did not see 
them again. On account of the intense cold and the 
scant atmosphere, I think it perfectly safe to presume 
that they all perished within a few minutes after they 
gained their freedom. 

Exactly at twelve o'clock, noon, Dick Prouty an- 
nounced that dinner was ready. Just as we sat down 
to lunch Prof. Monahan spoke as follows : 

"Gentlemen, early in the afternoon we shall have the 
opportunity of beholding a most wonderful spectacle — 
a lunar sunrise. Do not get separated from one another 
before this event occurs. Prof. Gal van and I have made 
extensive preparations for making observations at the 
time of this occurrence, and it may become necessary 
for us to go on board the ship and move to some high- 
land system in order to find a more advantageous posi- 
tion from which to view this unusual phenomenon." 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 113 

Immediately after the close of the meal Capt. Ewald, 
Dr. Wharton, and Prof. Monahan and Galvan took a 
position to themselves and entered into a private con- 
sultation, while the rest of us in bright anticipation of 
a glorious sunrise and sunlit landscapes sat wondering 
what the next orders would be. 



CHAPTER XVm 

THE PHENOMENON OF A LUNAR 
SUN-RISE 

Almost in strict accordance with the estimate made 
by the astronomers on the day of our arrival at destina- 
tion the sun rose on the afternoon of December 23. 

At one o'clock p. m. Prof. Monahan, who is a mathe- 
matician of great merit and an eminent astronomer, in- 
formed us that the sun was getting very near the hori- 
zon and would appear at forty minutes past two o'clock 
of that afternoon. 

At the same time he advised that we go on board the 
ship and move out of the broad valley, one hundred 
miles westward, to greater altitudes in order to be in a 
more favorable position to witness this sight. 

The advice was followed out ; and in thirty minutes 
our ship was perched on the crest of one of the more 
lofty ranges of the Wolf Mountains, a position which 
gave us an excellent scope. 

At half past two o'clock it was announced that the 
sun was right at the horizon and that within a few 
minutes the edge of his great disk would appear. 

Every one had procured a small telescope and was 
keeping a sharp and steady lookout in an easterly 
course, or in the direction of the Apennine Mountains, 

114 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 115 

as if trying to see who could get the first glint of his 
rays. Truly we watched with a far greater degree of 
interest than if we had been expecting a total eclipse 
of the sun. 

Owing to the fact that there is no atmosphere of any 
consequence enveloping the moon to reflect the solar 
beams and thus produce twilight and the dawn of the 
morning, there was not yet any light about us save that 
reflected by the earth, and a very faint glimmer of 
zodiacal light in the black eastern sky to herald the 
approach of day. 

At thirty-eight minutes past two o'clock the cromo- 
sphere appeared, marking with a beautiful red glow the 
summits of the towering peaks of the Apennines and 
giving them the appearance of islands of light floating 
in a sea of gloom. 

Everywhere that sunlight was spread over the moon's 
surface there was no blending of colors but, instead, 
sharp outlines of light and shade, which gave the land- 
scape an awful appearance. 

Presently the rim of the great luminary appeared 
from the black horizon and darted his bright untem- 
pered beams upon the mountain tops, crowning them 
with dazzling brilliance, while their flanks and the val- 
leys were yet in utter darkness. 

All of a sudden the blue rays of light so strong that 
our eyes could not endure them darted from the distant 
horizon and cast a tinge of blue over all the mountains ; 
and, as the summits caught the sunbeams, insulated 
spots rose up rapidly on all sides of us. 

It was about one hour from the time the first glint of 
the sun's upper edge appeared until his whole disk was 
in sight. 



116 TO THE MOON AND 

This great luminary did not at all appear natural, but 
seemed like an electric arc in the sky, a gigantic lamp 
of glittering blue ; and the general tone of the sunlight 
over all the wild landscape about us was also blue. 

And to add to the desolate and awful appearance of 
the scenes about us the slopes of the ragged mountains 
went down abruptly and rose on the opposite sides of 
the sharp valleys at startling angles of inclination to 
reach the crest of the parallel ranges. 

The brilliant lighting of the summits of the sub- 
sidiary peaks and the crests of subsidiary ridges with 
the different colors of light served to increase by con- 
trast the prevailing darkness in the lowlands, places 
which the sunlight had not yet reached; and the long 
shadows of the peaks and the ranges everywhere in 
silhouette on the sea floors had an awful blackness. 

In short, there was all about us both far and near the 
violent contrast between the intense brightness of in- 
sulated parts and the deep gloom of those yet in equally 
intense shadow. 

A very strange aspect of the heavens at this time 
was that as the sunlight went leaping the valleys, the 
craters, the ranges from crest to crest, and the peaks 
from pinnacle to pinnacle, the stars even near the edge 
of the sun's disk and close to the horizon all around 
remained extremely bright amid the sun's blaze. 

The dark though star-lit sky helped the violence of 
the contrast, for the bright mountains in the distance 
stood forth upon a background formed by the blackness 
of inter-stellar space. 

There being but little atmosphere to diffuse the solar 
light, there is no twilight or dawn going before a lunar 
sunrise to herald the approach of day. For the same 
reason there are no perceptible winds, no clouds, no 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 117 

storms, no rainbows, no gorgeous tintings of the hea- 
vens, and no delicate shadings and soft blendings of 
colors ; but, on the contrary, only sharp outlines of light 
and shade. 

When the sun comes up, he bursts instantly into day 
and his fiery disk stands out distinct against the back- 
ground of the sky ; and after a fortnight's glare he as 
suddenly gives place to night. 

The visible effects of these natural conditions about 
us were in every sense truly unearthly and terrible. 

The hard, harsh, glowing light and pitchy shadows ; 
the black noon-day sky with the glaring sun ghastly in 
his brightness ; the absence of all signs of life save that 
of the long-since expired volcanoes ; and, in short, the 
total absence of every condition in nature that gives 
tenderness to an earthly landscape — all these things 
conspired to make up a scene of dreary, desolate gran- 
deur that is scarcely conceivable by an inhabitant of 
the earth. 

At the strong solicitation of all, the captain agreed 
to remain two days in the Wolf Mountains. The object 
in so doing was to observe what in the way of natural 
scenery on the western slopes of the mountain ranges 
and on the floors of the adjacent seas the sun on rising 
higher in the sky would reveal. 

On the morning of Dec. 25, Christmas Day, we left 
the refuge of the ship and again walked out on luna 
firma for a tramp and a climb among the peaks. This 
was the first time we had been from under cover of the 
ship since the sun rose. 

This great luminary now appeared to be about two 
hours high, sufficiently well up in the sky to illumine 
the western slopes of the Wolf Mountains and a narrow 



118 TO THE MOON AND 

strip along the western border of the broad valley lying 
east of us. 

For perhaps an hour we tramped along the crest of 
the range on which our ship was perched, in a blaze of 
untempered, pitiless sunshine, while our feet were freez- 
ing on the rocks beneath us. Several times I was forced 
to lower myself into the dark shadows of the mountain 
craggs to escape the merciless heat of the sun's rays. 

The sun now being well up in the sky, we were able 
to see distinctly objects sixty miles away. The most 
distant things within our scope were as distinct to our 
vision as those very near us. And because there is not, 
on the moon's surface, any aerial perspective, we were 
not able at first to form very true conceptions of the 
remoteness of objects. 

The sunlight spread over all the landscape gave us a 
broad scope in all directions and revealed many strange 
and interesting objects in wild and rugged nature, 
which greatly increased within us the true spirit of 
exploration with a view to satisfying curosity and to 
gaining scientific knowledge. 




FIG. 35 



(Paris Observatory.) 



FIG. 35. PART OF THE SHORE OF THE MARE IMBRIUM. 

The dark, smooth area occupying the right in the picture is the 
Mare Imbrium. The large vulcanoid with a dark floor, near 
the lower margin is Plato. The white, solitary peak a half-inch 
directly above Plato is Pico. Upward to the right of Plato are 
the Teneriff Peaks. About one inch to the left of Plato and 
extending downward to the left, directly across the Alps Moun- 
tains the Alpine Valley is faintly shown. (See Fig. 36). Far- 
ther to the left are the Caucasus Mountains extending from the 
vulcanoids, Aristoteles and Eudoxus, upward to the Palus Put- 
redinus. To the right of this strait are the vulcanoids Ar- 
chemides, Aristillus and Autrolycus. To the left of this strait 
out upon the floor of the Sea of Serenity is a faint white spot 
that marks the site of the problematical Linne. The long curved 
range of mountains extending from the Palus Putredinus upward 
to the right is the Apennines. The symmetrical crater at the 
upper terminus of the Appenines is Eratosthenes. The very large 
vulcanoid far out on the floor of the Mare Procelerum, in the 
upper part of the picture, is Copernicus. Downward to the right 
of Copernicus are the Carpathian Mountains. 



CHAPTER XIX 

TO THE APENNINE MOUNTAINS 
IN A BIPLANE 

Late in the afternoon of Christmas Day, after forty- 
eight hours of wonderful glimpses and delightful ex- 
periences in the Wolf Mountains, we returned to the 
spot in the valley where our ship was first moored. 

On the following morning, Dec. 26, the biplane was 
ordered out, and Profs. Brunor, Pumell, and Knowlton 
set it up. Within less than two hours after the work 
was begun these skillful machinists had placed all the 
parts together so as to form a strong, complete, and 
harmonious whole. Then the great winged craft was 
equipped in every way for a flight, after which Prof. 
Thorsen named it the Petrel. 

About sixty miles away, in a course almost due 
southeast, steeps unscalable, and wild and bare to the 
distant view, loomed up in huge, rocky masses high 
above the arid plain. Toward this craggy fortress of 
nature we directed our flight. 

With seven members of our party, Capt. Ewald, the 
Rev. Mr. Merritt, Prof. Galvan, Dr. Wharton, Mr. 
Waite, the writer, and aviator Knowlton, the great 
machine, though panting in the effort, steadily rose to 
an altitude of two thousand feet, a height sufficient to 

119 



120 TO THE MOON AND 

place us clear of the moderate reliefs in the valley be- 
neath us and to enable us to see our way clearly ; and 
within thirty minutes the biplane came gently to the 
surface at the base of this mighty and picturesque 
mountain group. 

At the end of the flight the first thing that engaged 
my attention and interest was the rugged, wild, and 
desolate grandeur of the huge mountain mass with its 
dozens of cold, blue, flinty-looking peeks which Profs. 
Monahan and Galvan estimated to be from three to 
five miles high ; and the altitudes of these needles cer- 
tainly must be all that these most competent authori- 
ties claimed for them, for to me they truly appeared to 
be leaning against the firmament of the heavens, or 
even piercing the sky. 

And they stood forth gaunt and naked, and like the 
hills, the valleys, and the plains everywhere, were, to 
all appearances at least, totally devoid of both vege- 
table and animal life. 

For a great distance along the bases of the foothills 
of this great mountain system extends a huge rent in 
the surface. This tremendous cleft is ninety miles in 
length, from two to three miles in breadth, and in many 
places so deep that it is not possible, even by means of 
search lights, for one to see the bottom of it. In its 
serpentine course and its extreme length this great rift 
resembles, somewhat, a deserted river bed; but the 
fact that it is uniform in neither length nor breadth 
stands as competent evidence that it owes its origin to 
some other cause than that of running water. 

Against the base of the mountain range a short dis- 
tance from this fissure rises a precipitous cliff many 
miles long and overhung by a thick strata of rock. 
This projecting strata is supported by dozens of mas- 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 121 

sive columns resembling very much those of Luxor and 
of ancient Thebes. These giant columns somewhat 
cylindrical in shape are from thirty to sixty feet in 
diameter and appear to be more than two hundred and 
fifty feet in height. 

As I gazed upon these supports of stupendous pro- 
portions, I observed in them also a very close resemb- 
lance to the three ancient orders of Greek architecture 
— ^the "severe" Doric columns, the graceful Ionic col- 
umns with their spiral volutes, and the ornate 
Corinthian. 

But they are far more colossal than any of these 
orders, or than the historic monoliths of Santa Sophia, 
Pompey's Pillar, or the "eternal mountains of Kamak" ; 
but unlike any of those magnificent works of art, they 
are wholly the work of nature, which makes them all 
the more grand. 

The contrast of light and shadow and of heat and 
cold were still amazing ; and to prevent our hands and 
faces from blistering we were either forced to wear 
gloves and to shade heavily the observation windows 
in our helmets, or to remain most of the time concealed 
from the sun's rays by keeping ourselves well within 
the dark shadows of the mountains. 

While on this short trip we had many experiences 
wonderful for both the wholesome entertainment and 
the valuable scientific knowledge they furnished us. 

We returned to the ship at one o'clock p. m. after 
having been out five hours, with greatly increased de- 
sires to push with vigor the work of exploration with 
a view to sight-seeing and to scientific investigation. 

Until the morning of Dec. 27 we all remained at the 
ship. During most of this time Capt Ewald and Profs. 



122 



TO THE MOON AND 



I 



Galvan and Rider, who are recognized as being among 
the ablest selenographers, were attentively engaged at 
looking over and studying some very recent maps and 
photographs of the moon, which they carried along, 
with a view to determining the bearings for the next 
objects of study to be visited. 



CHAPTER XX 

FROM THE 

APENNINE MOUNTAINS TO 

PLATO via ARCHEMIDES, 

PICO, AND THE TEN- 

ERIFF PEAKS 

The next main object of interest and study to be 
'visited was Plato, a great ring mountain in the vicinity 
of the north pole. Profs. Monahan and Galvan espe- 
cially ^^ere deeply interested in this sidetrip, and in- 
sisted on making it because Plato is one of the places 
on the moon where their then-recent observations and 
study as directors of astronomical observatories had 
discovered indications of what they thought might pos- 
sibly be some forms of lunar life. 

Early on the morning of Dec. 27, we were commanded 
to get ourselves in readiness at once for the long flight. 
And exactly at four o'clock a. m. the Petrel, loaded to 
its utmost capacity and under the guidance of Aviator 
Thorsen, rose to an altitude of seven thousand and one 
hundred feet and sped away to the north above the 
floor of the Mare Imbrium or the Sea of Rains, closely 
accompanied by the ship bearing the remainder of the 
party and all their equipments. 

123 



124 TO THE MOON AND 

The name sea has been given to the separate clouded 
areas on the moon's surface, which, when seen from the 
earth, are plainly visible to the unaided eye. This 
name was assigned to these dark areas because when 
the study of selenography was practically in its infancy 
they were thought to be large bodies of water. But 
they are not seas ; and if they ever were, not a drop of 
water in any form rests upon their floors now. 

These so-called "'seas'' are simply extensive lava beds, 
and their surfaces are generally of about the color and 
consistency of emery stone ; and besides a very limited 
number of low, small, bleb-shaped eminences varying 
in circumference from three to ten miles, the only "is- 
lands" found within their borders are a few small 
crater rings, some isolated mesas, and a scatter of 
solitary peaks. 

All the seas are more or less rolling like most of our 
prairies; and often winding chains of low hills and 
huge crack-like ravines are everywhere visible in them, 
while their "shores" usually present endless successions 
of peaks, volcanoes, and fire-scarred cliffs. 

In about thirty minutes after we began the flight, 
Archemides, a giant ring mountain fifty miles in di- 
ameter, hove in sight ; and within twenty minutes more 
we were directly above its south wall. 

The massive ramparts of this great natural structure 
has an altitude of seven thousand feet, is beautifully 
terraced, and contains much detail, both within and 
without. 

As this was the first great vulcanoid we had seen at 
close range and under the sun's illumination. Prof. 
Thorsen in order to give us some excellent glimpses of 
its details followed its rim for one hundred and twenty 
miles. 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 125 

As we were approaching this enormous crater there 
was nothing to which I could so aptly compare it as the 
jaw bone of some monster thickly set with tusks ; and 
as the Petrel sailing at the tremendous speed of more 
than two miles a minute skimmed along almost touch- 
ing the sharp summits of the cold, blue peaks which 
crown the crest of its encircling ramparts, the prodig- 
ious wall thickly studded with sharp-topped needles 
passing rapidly beneath us reminded us very much of 
a band saw on a stupendous scale running at high 
speed. 

We were almost forty minutes traveling a little 
more than half its circumference. 

About six o'clock we came upon a beautiful, unnamed 
group of mountains one hundred and forty miles north 
of Archemides. This structure in general is almost in 
the shape of the letter Y, and the crests of the ridges 
extending outward in the three directions are almost 
solidly capped with peaks whose summits are as white 
as the chalk cliffs of Dover or as the new-fallen snow, 
and which rise from five thousand to six thousand feet 
above the floor of the Mare Imbrium. 

At twenty minutes past eight o'clock we came sud- 
denly upon a solitary peak thirty miles in circumfer- 
ence at its base, standing out upon the desolate plain a 
monument to the ages. 

Upon our first observing it, the Petrel appeared to 
be soaring far above its topmost pinnacle; but as we 
rapidly drew nearer, its summit, as if defying our ap- 
proach, seemed to shoot upward into the black dome of 
the sky to an altitude of eight thousand feet. 

For several minutes the biplane sped along just above 
one of the broad terraces on its western slope. Part 
of the time we were within the shadow of the peak, 



126 TO THE MOON AND 

which was so dark that we could not easily discern one 
another's features even at the short distance of five 
feet. This is a mountain of exudation, and the name 
of it is Pico. 

At this isolated peaJc those of our party who had 
taken passage in the ship descended to the surface to 
make some photographs of some of the natural scenery 
in the vicinity of the mountain; but those of us who 
were on the biplane turned almost due west, and on 
account of the roughness in the details of the surface 
continued the flight. 

After traveling a distance of about one hundred 
miles and passing a number of crater rings from one 
to three miles in diameter and from two thousand to 
five thousand feet deep we again directed our course 
almost due north. 

Presently we found the Petrel skimming along near 
the bases of the Teneriff Peaks, a group of mountains 
of exudation, which rise almost abruptly from the sur- 
rounding lava plain to an altitude of more than eight 
thousand feet. 

Continuing our course we landed at ten o'clock on a 
broad, smooth terrace three-fourths the way up the 
outer slope of the wall of Plato, where we made close 
connection with the rest of our party in the ship. 

Here Capt. Ewald and a half dozen others including 
Dr. Wharton, and Profs. Monahan, Gal van, and Rider, 
hastily organized themselves into a special exploring 
party and sped away in the ship with a vfev/ to giving 
this particular spot as close inspection as the time set 
apart for this work would allow. 

As soon as the ship disappeared over the ramparts of 
the mountain, the rest of us formed ourselves into an 




FIG. 36. PICO, PLATO, AND THE ALPINE VALLEY. 

The landscape presented here is the extreme southern part of 
the field shown in Fig. 35. 

The large vulcanoid here shown is Plato. The beautiful, soli- 
tary peak about one inch directly above Plato, with a long 
shadow indicating that the mountain has three prominent points 
or needles is Pico. (See Fig. 37). The deep, straight furrow 
cutting downward to the left, across the Alps Mountains is the 
Alpine Valley. 

(Nasmyth's "Moon.") 





m 


■ 


■ '''■jM 




m 






1 









FIG. 37. AN IDEAL SKETCH OF PICO. 

(Nasmyth's "Moon. "J 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 127 

exploring party to go on a climb among the towering 
peaks. 

By means of a cord about one hundred and fifty feet 
in length we bound ourselves together in a long chain 
and at once began the steep ascent; and by twelve 
o'clock, noon, we had succeeded in reaching the crest 
of the mountain's rim and were gazing in wonder and 
astonishment into the yawning chasm which it incloses. 

This vulcanoid has a diameter of sixty miles and the 
interior walls rise at an angle of about 45° to an alti- 
tude of seven thousand feet above its floor. 

On account of the scarcity of time, the steepness of 
the declivities, and the great distance, we did not at- 
tempt to descend into the crater. From the crest of 
the encircling wall the floor of the crater appeared 
smooth, and of a very dark hue, and I saw distinctly 
near the center of the floor at least a half dozen crater 
cones extending upward from five hundred to one thou- 
sand feet. 

The time during which the ship was gone on this 
side trip was a distressing period in the life of Dick 
Prouty, the colored man. 

After the ship had departed Mr. Vanderlip led Dick 
to believe that the moon was inhabited by a strange 
people who never spoke audibly, nor smiled, and who 
were easily offended, and quick, strong, and violent in 
their resentments. 

The impromptu dialogue which followed this news 
which startled Dick opened up as follows: 

"Dick, three years ago Profs. Monahan and Gal van 
by means of a large telescope discovered right here 
in this mountain where we are now some signs of lunar 
life,'" said Mr. Vanderlip, "and they are almost dead 
certain to find some native inhabitants before they re- 



128 TO THE MOON AND 

turn from this side trip. And if they do, you've got to 
stand up with one of the fiercest-looking of the typical, 
Selenite women we can capture and let Brother Mer- 
ritt here unite you and her in the holy bonds of matri- 
money." 

''N-n-no sah, boss; nothin' doin' ^ong that line," 
promptly replied Dick with quite a degree of emphasis 
and positiveness, " 'cause you see I's already a married 
man and wants to do de right thing." 

^TTou know, Dick, when Columbus discovered Amer- 
ica," answered Mr. Vanderlip, ''he took some of the na- 
tive inhabitants back with him to Spain as evidence 
that he had discovered a new country inhabited by a 
strange people. If he had not done this, probably the 
people in Europe would not have believed his story. 
Now that is just what we want to do — take some of 
the natives of the moon back with us to earth as proof 
that we have been somewhere ; and the way to do this 
is for you to get married and take your wife back with 
you." 

"If you wants to do something to show whah you's 
been, some o' you white folks can dis tie up wi dat 
woman," replied Dick, clearly manifesting a rebellious 
tendency. *'You see if I goes carryin' dat woman back 
wid me to Bellville dar'll sho be a bad mix-up wid the 
ole lady at home." 

At half past one o'clock p. m. those who went away 
in the ship returned. They informed us that they had 
been entirely around the ramparts of the mountain, 
had descended to the surface at no less than a dozen 
places, and had discovered nothing whatever in the 
vicinity of this great ring mountain to indicate the 
presence of any forms of lunar life. 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 129 

Immediately after the ship returned from this short 
cruise about Plato, we all went on board and descended 
the mountain slope to the point where the Petrel rested 
and hurriedly prepared and ate our noon lunch. 



CHAPTER XXI 

FROM PLATO TO THE APENNINE 

MOUNTAINS via MONT BLANC 
AND THE ALPINE VALLEY 

At two o'clock the command was given to get ready 
for the return trip. 

The biplane was at once headed southeast and quickly- 
loaded with passengers to its fullest capacity. Then 
Prof. Knowlton took upon himself the grave responsi- 
bility of acting in the double capacity of pilot and en- 
gineer on this part of our tour, and thereby took into 
his own hands the destiny of all on board. 

Just at this moment I was almost completely un- 
nerved when I discovered that the Petrel was squarely 
facing a vertical cliff thousands of feet in height and 
not more than two hundred and fifty feet away. 

"In what direction are you going to fly from this 
point?" inquired I. 

"In the direction in which the machine is headed," 
came the prompt and positive reply from Prof. Knowl- 
ton. 

"It furnishes me an extreme degree of transient en- 
joyment to sit in this biplane as it gradually rises from 
a level, smooth, and limitless plain to a great altitude," 
said I in response, "but I am not able to nerve myself 

130 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 131 

up to sit strapped in this machine and let it dash off 
the terrace and over the brow of that precipice with 
us." 

"Being surrounded by all this grandeur, you should 
not let the thought of calamities beset your mind," re- 
plied the aviator, "but trust at every moment that 
everything will be well with us in all our ventures." 

As he spoke these words he quickly drew my straps 
a little tighter and then m.ounted the machine. As 
the great winged craft went rapidly rolling in the di- 
rection of the abrupt declivity, he gave expression to 
the following: 

"It becomes a necessity for us to take chances, and 
necessity is pretty closely related to duty. 
So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 

So near is God to man, 
When duty whispers low, Thou must' 
The youth replies, T can.' " 

Just as he uttered the last word, this giant piece of 
mechanism with its burden of more than twelve hun- 
dred pounds plunged over the brow of the cliff, made a 
long swoop downward into the dark, immeasurable 
depths of the awful abyss beneath us, and sped its 
flight in the direction of the Alps Mountains. 

This particular flight, in which the Petrel, now nick- 
named "Old Trusty," broke all previous biplane records 
on earth for speed, was by far the most exciting and 
wonderful experience of my life. 

For the first sixty miles our course was almost 
straight; and, as a result, our craft was almost on a 
perfect balance and the sailing smooth and delightful. 
We were moving very rapidly, but on account of the 
great altitude at which we were soaring I did not at 
the time realize the fact. 



132 TO THE MOON AND 

In forty minutes after our departure from Plato we 
reached the Alps at the most rugged and massive part 
of this great system and passed into its shadow. From 
this point we pursued a serpentine course almost par- 
allel with the threadline of the main chain of this high- 
land, which closely borders the Imbrium Sea, until we 
reached the entrance to the Alpine Valley. 

On this last stretch of the course the Petrel in its 
sweeps around the shorter curves of the mountain 
range constantly and violently ducked and tilted, often 
standing on the ends of its wings at an angle of 45""; 
and it was so swift in its flight that the crags and the 
spurs on the black faces of the cliffs appeared to go by 
us like cannon balls. 

All the while I wondered if the aviator "had lost his 
head'* and become desperate. Every time Old Trusty 
tilted, I thought we were gone; but each time, just at 
the critical moment, it seemed to give a forward lurch 
to level itself up again, and continued its record break- 
ing speed. And immediately after each ''close call" the 
aviator without speaking a word would slowly turn his 
head and look at us pleasingly through the observation 
window of his helmet, direct his sight straight ahead 
again, and give the biplane a little more speed. 

And imagine, if you can, our environments : a million 
electric arcs almost at the blaze of noon shining down 
upon you from every direction with dazzling brilliance 
from a jet-black sky; the strange and lurid glare of the 
sun over all the rugged and picturesque landscape ; the 
black, slaty-looking surface of the Mare Imbrium ex- 
tending away to your right hundreds of miles beyond 
the farthest reach of the eye; the long, sharp, black 
shadows of the mountains lying out upon the sea floor, 
away in the distance ahead ; the dark, tomb-like chasms 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 133 

in the subsidiary relief sections beneath you ; in a bi- 
plane a mile above the lava sea and making more than 
two miles a minute and closely hugging the steep de- 
clivities and the inconceivable altitudes of an inpene- 
trable mountain chaos at your left. 

Such was our ride between the hours of three o'clock 
and four o'clock of this memorable afternoon, during 
which time the Petrel covered the distance of one hun- 
dred and thirty-eight miles which separates Plato from 
Mont Blanc. 

Although this particular stretch of the afternoon 
flight seemed to me to be a most reckless and desper- 
ate one, I did not, for some reason or other, become 
very much alarmed at the dangers to which we were 
exposed. 

Perhaps the high degree of composure and daring 
spirit manifested by the man who held our destiny in 
his hands had much to do with reconciling me to 
the perilous position in which we were placed. And 
the immediate psychic effect of the awful silence that 
constantly prevailed about us, of the strange and won- 
derful aspect of nature, and of my consciousness of the 
skill and the wisdom of the Creator displayed in the 
harmonious revolutions of the mighty spheres in the 
heavens that bended above us, in some mysterious way 
appeared to nerve me up and to make me equal to the 
task. 

In short, it is entirely beyond the reach of any hu- 
man language to picture the scenes of solemn, silent 
grandeur that presented themselves before us in what- 
ever course I directed my gaze; therefore, it must be 
left almost wholly to the intellectual resources of the 
reader to arrive at a full realization of what our sur- 
roundings were. 



134 TO THE MOON AND 

Finding the floor of the sea at the base of Mont Blanc 
highly favorable to making a landing, the biplane was 
brought to the surface. Here we waited for further 
orders from the captain of the ship and from the selen- 
ographers. Within five minutes after the landing was 
effected, while we were proudly stepping around on 
luna firma and exulting over the great feat we had just 
performed, the ship, bearing the rest of the party, de- 
scended to the surface from a point almost directly 
over our heads. 

Mont Blanc is a rough, precipitous mountain of 
exudation which lifts its summit twelve thousand feet 
into the dome of the sky. 

At the base of this, the most remarkable peak of the 
lunar Alps, the Alpine Valley opens out, a fantastic 
gap stretching away to the east in a straight line far 
beyond the ken of vision. In other words, this gap is 
a gigantic furrow, and the most conspicuous depression 
ordinarily classed in this group, cutting straight across 
the center of the Alps Mountains and connecting the 
Mare Imbrium with the Mare Frigoris, or the Sea of 
Cold. 

This wonderful depression is eighty-five miles in 
length, from two to six miles broad, and its walls are 
approximately six thousand feet high and almost verti- 
cal. Its floor is generally level and thickly dotted with 
small crater pits, and strewn with detached stones of 
various sizes and shapes and with fragments of me- 
teoric bodies. (See Fig. 36.) 

After a stop of thirty minutes at the base of Mont 
Blanc, this towering sentinel which seems to stand 
guard at the entrance to the Alpine Valley, we passed 
into this huge furrow. A steady sail of one hour 
brought us within view of Aristoteles, a ring mountain 




FIG. 38 



(Yerkes Observatory.) 



FIG. 38. ARISTOTELES, EUDOXUS AND 
SURROUNDINGS. 

The two large vulcanoids just beneath the center of the pic- 
ture are Aristoteles and Eudoxus. The Caucasus Mountains 
occupy the center of the picture. The dark, smooth surface in 
the upper part of the picture is the Sea of Serenity. A part of 
the Imbrium Sea is seen at the right. The highlands in the 
upper, right-hand corner is a part of the Apennines. The broad 
strait separating the Caucasus from the Apennines is called the 
Palus Putredinus. The white spot on the floor of the Sea of 
Serenity, to the left of the strait, is the site of the Problematical 
Linne. In the lower, right-hand corner of the picture the Alpine 
Valley is seen opening into the Mara Frigoris. 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 135 

sixty miles in diameter and with a wall eleven thousand 
feet high and beautifully terraced. 

At this point we turned almost due south and con- 
tinued the homeward flight above a wild, desolate re- 
gion embracing perhaps fifty thousand square miles. 

After we had passed over perhaps a hundred linear 
miles of this rough region, I perceived far to our left 
the outer slope of Eudoxus, a large, irregular vulcanoid 
forty miles in diameter. Although v/e v/ere just at this 
time soaring at a great altitude in order to stay clear of 
the peaks, I w^as not, from our viewpoint, able to see the 
floor top nor the inner slope of its rim; but on the outer 
declivity I discerned many buttresses and projections, 
and observed that the crest of the encircling ridge is 
crowmed with m^any peaks, one of which shoots upward 
twelve thousand feet above the level of the adjacent 
sea. 

At seven o'clock, one and a half hours after we dis- 
covered Eudoxus, Old Trusty was speeding along at the 
rate of one hundred and twenty miles an hour almost 
within the shadow of the range of the Caucasus Moun- 
tains, one of v/hose peaks has an altitude of nineteen 
thousand feet. 

At eight o'clock we passed between two large, pic- 
turesque, crater rings — i^ristillus at our right and Au- 
trolycus at our left. The former is a hundred miles 
in circumference and its tallest peak has an altitude 
approximating tv/elve thousand feet, while the latter 
is eighty miles in circumference and nine thousand 
feet in height. 

At nine o'clock v\^e reached the point from which 
we took our departure at four o'clock in the morning. 

With the exception of a stay of three and a half 
hours at Plato and a stop of thirty minutes at the en- 



136 TO THE MOON AND 

trance to the Alpine Valley we were on a flight through- 
out the day and traveled. about fifteen hundred miles. 

During the day thousands of square miles of wild 
and barren area came within our scope and presented 
excellent glimpses of three great mountain systems, a 
half dozen vulcanoids with diameters ranging from 
thirty to sixty miles, and the full breadths of two lava 
seas with their tiny crater pits, their isolated mesas, 
and their solitary peaks. 

This was the close of the sixth terrestrial day of our 
sojourn on the moon, time sufficient to give us a prac- 
tical demonstration of the fact that the earth presents 
to lunarians exactly the same phases that the moon 
presents to the inhabitants of the earth — new earth, 
first quarter, full earth, third quarter, and new earth 
again — except that the phases are in a reverse order. 
When the inhabitants of earth have a new moon, lu- 
narians have a full earth — a bright full-orbed moon 
with fourteen times as much apparent surface as ours. 

At this time the sun was apparently about 50° above 
the eastern horizon; or, as we commonly say, "about 
four hours high." Its intense and sickening heat and 
bright light were becoming almost past endurance. 
For this reason our medical adviser and "family phy- 
sician," Dr. Wharton, and others, recommended and 
advised that we tour the moon from east to west and 
travel sufficiently far each day to keep the sun's posi- 
tion, with respect to our location, near the eastern hori- 
zon. They thought that by so doing we could easily 
avoid both the intense heat of the sun's vertical rays 
during the long lunar day and the extreme cold of the 
equally long lunar night, and yet have constantly both, 
the light and the heat of the low sun by means of which 
to travel and* to explore. 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 137 

This advice was followed out. The moon being about 
six thousand and eight hundred miles in circumference, 
we were forced to travel each day, on an average, about 
two hundred and thirty-five miles, in order to complete 
the circuit of the moon in a month. We easily traveled 
the required distance each day, and yet had an over- 
abundance of time in which to make long side-trips in 
the biplane. 

At half past nine o'clock p. m. we ate our evening 
meal, and thirty minutes later retired for sleep and 
rest. 



CHAPTER XXII 

FROM ARGHEMIDES TO 

COPERNICUS via THE APPENNINE 

GORGES AND ERATOSTHENES 

At five o'clock on the morning of Dec. 28, the day 
following our return from Plato, we took our departure 
for Copernicus by way of the Apennine gorges and 
Eratosthenes. 

The selenographers rose at three o'clock in the morn- 
ing and held a consultation among themselves. The 
rest of us were called at half past four, and a few min- 
utes later breakfast was announced. While we par- 
took of this repast the scientific men who had been 
holding the meeting stated that those of us who could 
withstand the exposure and were willing to face the 
unavoidable dangers that would beset us on every side 
might, if we desired, travel in the biplane and that the 
rest might take passage in the ship. 

Owing to the novelty of it and to the excellent, un- 
obstructed views it afforded I chose the former mode 
of travel. 

The lava seas and their embayments are pretty gen- 
erally rolling like most of our prairies, but extremely 
rough in their minor details. 

138 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 139 

Hard, flange-like projections in the form of ridges 
only a few inches in height, with sharp crests as hard 
as cinder, extend in serpentine courses about over 
many parts of the surface. The surface is character- 
ized also by other varieties of details in the form of 
tiny crater pits varying in diameter from eight inches 
to five feet, and by as many very sm.all bleb-shaped 
eminences. 

Large quantities of detached stones, due most likely 
to the great extremes of heat and cold, often lie in 
heaps in the valleys and the ravines adjacent to the 
cliffs, and fragments of meteoric bodies cover the seas. 

All these barriers at once made it clear to every one 
that the auto, which had been carefully packed and 
taken along, could be of no service to explorers in a 
world like our satellite ; therefore, this conveyance was 
completely abandoned and left behind. 

The m-embers of our party readily agreed as to the 
next objects of interest and study to be visited, but 
were divided among themselves as to the particular 
course to be pursued to reach them and disputed with 
one another in a spirited but friendly manner. 

Some desired to pursue a course parallel to the east- 
em "'shore," or border, of the Imbrium Sea and fly near 
the western slope of the Apennine Mountains until we 
reached Eratosthenes, while others wished to cross this 
great highland system by following the mountain val- 
leys and gorges in order to catch some glimpses of its 
scenery. 

The controversy on this point was concluded by 
Profs. Monahan and Knowlton as follows: 

"This great system of the Apennines is four hundred 
and sixty miles long, one hundred and seventy miles in 
extreme breadth, and has dozens of peaks whose alti- 



140 TO THE MOON AND 

tudes range from eighteen thousand to twenty-six 
thousand feet/* said the astronomer and selenographer, 
*'and is the most massive and extensive of the reliefs 
on the visible hemisphere of the moon. The latest 
photographs of the moon, and astronomical observa- 
tions made under the most favorable condition in every 
respect reveal the facts that some of the mountain val- 
leys are very deep and comparatively narrow, while 
others are shallow and have barriers to progress ; and 
all of them zigzag abruptly and often in their courses. 
These existing facts considered along with the extreme 
tenuity of the atmosphere in the greater altitudes will 
make your flying very difficult and render the condi- 
tions highly favorable to wrecking the machine or to 
hanging up indefinitely in the mountains. Even when 
the surface beneath you is smooth and your sailing 
clear, imminent dangers lurk unthought of about all 
heavier-than-air machines propelled by means of gaso- 
line or storage batteries." 

*T am to drive and guide the Petrel in this flight," 
replied the aviator, "and I have sufficient faith in my- 
self and the machine to boldly make the venture al- 
though it may, as you say, prove to be a perilous one." 

The course through the mountains was finally agreed 
upon. 

It was arranged for the Petrel to lead in the flight 
and for the ship to follow closely in the rear in order 
to be in a position to render immediate assistance in 
the event of a wreck. It v/ould have been absolutely 
comfortable and safe for all to have taken passage in 
the ship, but for the reasons previouslj^ stated many 
preferred to travel in the biplane. 

Perhaps it is in place to say here that the moon has 
magnetic poles and that the needle of the compass 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 141 

promptly and vigorously responds to them, and that 
this instrument was wholly reliable and without price 
to us in our travels and researches. 

The promoters of this great expedition as stated in 
a foregoing chapter, were mathematicians, astrono- 
mers, and selenographers of renown, and ready and 
competent to produce at a moment's notice, by means 
of a supply of photographs and key maps of the moon's 
visible hemisphere, and by means of the compass, the 
courses of and the distances to, all objects of study and 
interest. 

Exactly at five o'clock Capt. Ewald handed the avia- 
tor a large key map of the region over which we were 
to fly that day, containing thereon a scale of miles and 
bearings of the compass to govern him in his flight, 
and spoke as follows: 

''So far as I know tliere is nothing more to detain 
us at this point ; so you may wing out, Knowlton, when 
you are ready." 

The aviator quickly sprang to his feet and, cutting 
his eyes fiercely but pleasingly at those about him, 
called out in the following words: 

"All aboard the Petrel for Eratosthenes and Coper- 
nicus." 

Four of us besides the aviator took passage in the 
biplane, and within two minutes after the call Old 
Trusty was again winging its desperate flight in the 
direction of destination. In about three minutes after 
v/e started I looked back a"nd saw the ship rising high 
into the dome of the sky. 

After we had traveled almost due south above a mod- 
erately smooth surface for about two hundred miles, 
the aviator, taking the chances of barriers in the ser- 



142 TO THE MOON AND 

pentine valleys and gorges, turned recklessly into the 
great system of the Apennines. 

And truly these so-called gorges are rather clefts or 
rents in the surface, which generally follow courses 
almost parallel with the threadline of the valleys, but 
sometimes make abrupt turns and cleave the mountain 
chains and the valleys at almost right angles. 

As the biplane skimmed along I noticed that the 
floors of the great rifts were strewn or covered with 
stones of every conceivable size and shape heaped in 
infinite confusion, and that the stupendous, continuous 
cliffs to our right and to our left were as dry, or free 
from moisture, as a brick-kiln. 

No sooner would we merge from one maze of moun- 
tains and shoot across a valley than we would dart 
blindly into a gorge of another parallel range of the 
system. 

As time wore on and my attention was called in 
rapid succession from one scene of desolation and de- 
struction to another, I wondered seriously if we should 
live to return to earth to tell the story of our travels. 

I truly believed at this particular tim.e that I had had 
a presentment that there was impending danger of 
some kind or other just ahead — ^that we w^ould either 
wreck on some angle or short curve in our wild, moun- 
tain flight, or run blindly into a rendevous or a colony 
of Selenites and at their hands meet a cruel death. 

After traveling about sixty miles in this cold, dry, 
and forsaken highland, I saw through a last upheaval of 
a defiant mountain range a narrow opening towards 
liberty; and presently the Petrel shot into the open 
high above the floor of the Mare Nubium, or the Sea of 
Clouds. Here we turned almost at right angles due 
west. 




FIG. 39. COPERNICUS AXD SURROUNDINGS. 

The level, smooth area in the lower part of the picture is th€ 
Mare Imbrium. This sea is bordered on the left by a part of 
the Apennines. The vulcanoid marking the terminus of this 
mountain chain is Eratosthenes. The large vulcanoid above 
and to the right of the center of the picture is Copernicus. The 
jet-black, circular spot in the lower, left-hand corner of the plate 
marks the point of our arrival on, and departure from, the 
moon. (See Figs. 30, 32, 34, and 35). 

(^Yerkes Observatory.) ' 



•> 



'M 






/ 4% 



^.".-^ 










i / ♦ *»-rt.^ ft iff 3# 



FIG. 40. COPERNICUS. 



(Nasmyth's "Moon".) 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 143 

Sixty minutes more brought us to Eratosthenes, a 
symmetrical vulcanoid thirty-two miles in diameter and 
with very steep slopes. Its walls rise eight thousand 
feet above the floor of the adjacent seas and sixteen 
thousand feet above its own floor. 

We had an excellent view of this beautiful, natural 
structure. We did not come to the surface at this point, 
but continued our flight for copemicus two hundred 
miles ahead. 

One hundred miles beyond Eratosthenes we crossed 
a broken line of small crater pits extending from north 
to south a distance of one hundred and twenty miles, 
and verging at either end into a narrow crater valley. 
The apertures of these long-extinct volcanoes, from our 
elevated view point, reminded me of a long chain of un- 
capped coke ovens. 

Our approach to Copemicus was grand beyond de- 
scription. A few minutes after we crossed the line of 
crater pits, while Old Trusty was soaring at an altitude 
of two miles, I beheld in the distance ahead a vast 
region of the wildest volcanic desolation. Here craters 
from one mile to five miles in diameter crowd together 
in such countless numbers that the surface as far as 
the eye can reach looks frothed-over with them. And 
away to the northward run several great chasms a mile 
wide and of appalling blackness and depths. (See Fig. 
40). 

Presently the stupendous ramparts of Copemicus 
hove in sight ; and one of the first things I observed was 
a pale-blue spot in the sky about the size of an inflated 
toy balloon slowly shifting its position among the tower- 
ing peaks of this great ring mountain. It was our ship 
bearing the rest of our party. 



144 TO THE MOON AND 

On a nearer approach to this enormous vulcanoid I 
observed crag rising on crag, and precipice upon preci- 
pice, mingled with craters and yawning pits, towering 
pinnacles of rock, and piles of scoria. 

Within twenty minutes more the Petrel was almost 
against its wall. 

Although the biplane was a little more than two miles 
above the floor of the Mare Nubium, we were yet com- 
pelled to look upward along a slope of 60° or 75° to a 
height of more than three thousand feet to see the 
slender peaks, forests of rocky steeps, columns, mina- 
rets, and giant obelisks that crown the crest. 

All these masses of dazzling blue jammed together in 
great profusion and standing out against a dark back- 
ground all spangled with stars formed a grand pano- 
rama that seemed something unreal. 

Several attempts were made, without success, to pass 
over the encircling wall in the biplane. Finally we were 
forced to descend to the surface of a terrace on the 
outer slope two thousand and seven hundred feet below 
the crest of the rim which we afterward succeeded in 
reaching after a climb of two hours. 

At eleven o'clock, after having traveled in all a little 
more than five hundred miles, we stood on the crest of 
the north wall of Copernicus, one of the grandest of 
the lunar craters located exactly on the tip of the nose 
of the "Man in the Moon." 

This great vulcanoid named in honor of Nicholas 
Copernicus, a celebrated German astronomer, is about 
sixty miles in diameter, and its ramparts rise twelve 
thousand feet above its floor. 

From the central part of this deep, bowl-shaped de- 
pression rise three peaks in pyramidal form, the tallest 
of which has an altitude of two thousand and four hun- 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 145 

dred feet; yet, the basin in which stands this little 
mountain group is in every way so immensely large 
that, to an observer standing on the crest of its ram- 
parts, this relief appears to be nothing more than a 
cluster of tiny hillocks. 

Copernicus is not really the monarch of all ring 
mountains, but its comparatively lone situation gives it 
an appearance of solitarj^ grandeur belonging to no 
other single formation on the moon. 

The whole area for many miles around Copernicus, 
when viewed from the crest of its rim, exhibits many 
most interesting types of structures. 

Fifty miles away to the north, the tall, sharp, snow- 
white peaks of the Carpathian Mountains forming the 
southern border of the Mare Imbrium presents one of 
the grandest sights that ever met my gaze. 



CHAPTER XXm 

FROM COPERNICUS TO TYCHO, i 
via MURUS RECTUS, OR THE 
"STRAIGHT WALL'* 

At twelve o'clock, noon, we took our departure for 
Tycho, a large crater of the ring-mountain type located 
about eight hundred miles almost due south of Coper- 
nicus and near the center of one of the wildest regions 
on the face of the moon. 

On account of the particular location of this stupen- 
dous structure with respect to a fancied picture of a 
stylishly-dressed lady on the moon's disk, and of its 
being the center of a great and mysterious ray system, 
it is known in myth as the "'flaming jewel'' that the 
Moon Maiden wears on her throat; but in the science 
of selenography it is known as Tycho, a name given in 
honor of Tycho Brahe, a celebrated Danish astronomer. 

Although this object of interest was a great way off 
our ''trunk line," which corresponded in a general way 
to the moon's equator, every one showed a decided in- 
clination to make liberal sacrifices in order to see this 
marvelous relief. 

Owing to the facts that the distance was long, our 
time limited, and the surface undulations of the dis- 
tricts in the vicinity of Tycho great and exceedingly 

146 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 147 

rough, the biplane was temporarily abandoned and left 
behind and passage was taken in the ship at a great 
altitude and a high speed. 

At one o'clock we reached Murus Rectus. This es- 
carpment familiarly known as the ''Straight Wall" and 
the ''railroad'' is the most extensive fault on the moon's 
visible hemisphere. 

The cliff extends from north to south a distance of 
sixty-five miles, is nearly straight, and rises almost ver- 
tically to a uniform height of two thousand and five 
hundred feet. 

Several of us traveled on foot along the base of this 
continuous precipice for some two miles. We found the 
surface within the confines of our vision hard, smooth, 
and gently rolling, and almost wholly free from all 
forms of minor details except a few small crater pits 
whose diameters range from five hundred to one thou- 
sand feet. 

After remaining thirty minutes at Murus Rectus we 
again pursued our journey. 

We reached Tycho at half past three o'clock in the 
afternoon, and found this projecture to be a steep, 
smooth, symmetrical ring mountain fifty-four miles in 
diameter with a floor seventeen thousand feet below 
the crest of its rim, and with an irregular central peak 
rising abruptly to an altitude of five thousand feet. 

In some respects this giant prominence surpasses 
Copernicus in a point of grandeur but is robbed of much 
of its splendor by being in a jam with the craggy and 
stupendous reliefs of a region apparently only fit for 
demons. 

At the first glimpse of this titan among lunar struc- 
tures I readily observed that it, like the rest of its class 



148 TO THE MOON AND 

of eminences, owes its origin and existence to the 
agency of heat. 

As the ship slowly descended from an altitude of 
thirty miles, to the crest of the mountain, I discerned a 
number of ^'rills'' or rents of enormous proportions, 
which cleave the ring at right angles and extend off in 
straight lines until they become lost in the canyons and 
the dismal shadows of the reliefs in the solitudes of the 
rueful wilderness. 

I observed also during our descent a number of well- 
defined but shallow, troughing valleys from twenty to 
thirty miles in breadth, extending outward from the 
ring in the manner of spokes from the hub of a wheel, 
far beyond our range of vision. 

Imm.ediately after the landing had been effected the 
selenographers set about inspecting the details of the 
valleys, the mountain ring, and other relief forms ad- 
jacent thereto and making both physical and chemical 
examinations of the rocky substances of which these 
structures are constituted. 

After the inspection and the tests had been made, 
Prof. Galvan spoke as follows : 

"Under a high sun and a forty-inch refracting tele- 
scope this vulcanoid, like a luminous body, appears to 
emit light to a great distance, intersecting all this 
rugged region about us ; and even under the sun's pres- 
ent angle of illumination I have observed from the 
earth, by means of a powerful telescope, streamers of 
light following intensely the courses of these broad 
valleys for more than a thousand miles. But this phe- 
nomenon does not manifest itself to us now. Like the 
mirage, it withdraws itself at a short range of view. 
If we were now on earth and viewing our satellite under 
a high magnifying power and most favorable atmos- 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 149 

pheric conditions, this mysterious ray system would 
present itself in all its richness and beauty. But in all 
our researches we discover no assignable reasons why 
this mountain should be the center of a great ray sys- 
tem/' 

The immediate surroundings of Tycho present an ap- 
pearance of grandeur far exceeding that of the moun- 
tain ring itself. The desolate and awful appearance of 
the massive reliefs, together with their infinite varieties 
of minor details which it is not possible for the most 
powerful telescopes and cameras to reveal defies de- 
scription. 

On the floors of the large crater rings, on the flat tops 
of the foothills, and on the low, broad terraces of the 
great elevations of every order stand countless small 
parasitic structures in the form of mesas. These little 
table lands have bases varying in circumference from 
two thousand to three thousand feet and rise at an 
angle of about 60° to an altitude of fifty or sixty feet. 

These comparatively small eminences bear, in turn, 
a secondary set of parasitic structures of a bleb-shape, 
which usually rest on circular bases from fifty to a hun- 
dred feet in circumference and rise to an altitude of 
fifteen or twenty feet. 

These little dome-shaped knobs usually have on or 
near their summits from one to three openings ranging 
from three to seven feet in diameter ; and in every in- 
stance in which a cone is characterized by more than 
one vent, the openings are on the sides of the summit 
and "look off'* at right angles to the slope of the emi- 
nence to w^hich they belong. 

Careful tests produced satisfactory evidence that 
these little eminences everywhere in the low-lands com- 
municate freely with one another and with underground 



150 TO THE MOON AND 

reservoirs and lakes, by means of passages extending 
downward and to the sides for untold depths. 

The roughly-circular vents at or near the summits of 
these tiny projectures resemble very much the mouths 
of geysers at their periods of rest. The dark-blue and 
the alabaster-like accumulations found about these 
openings are as hard and dry as concrete, and, when 
pounded on, ring like flint or steel. 

If this class of parasitic structures with their shapely- 
defined vents are to bear testimony to the fact that the 
agencies of fire and water have been at work here, it 
seems perfectly safe to say that these extinct geysers 
have been inactive for untold ages. 

On the elevated terraces and the upper slopes of all 
the greater elevations is still another class of parasitic 
structures entirely different from that roughly and 
briefly described in the preceding paragraphs. 

The individual projectures belonging to this order 
stand on bases covering from one hundred to two thou- 
sand square feet, extend vertically upward to astonish- 
ing heights, and vary infinitely in altitude. They are 
invariably pyramidal in form, having anjnvhere from 
three to eight faces, but I thought of them, as I gave 
inspection, as being spires rather than drawn-out pyra- 
mids. 

These gigantic monoliths stand everywhere in a jam, 
are numbered by millions, and collectively cover thou- 
sands of square miles of area. 

The basilar extremities of these wonderful chimney- 
like structures are of a dark-gray color and as hard as 
flint rock, while their upper extremities are of the color 
and consistency, almost, of soft brick. 

As I gazed upon these black-faced monoliths of mam- 
moth proportions, I questioned concerning their origin 




FIG. 41. MOON'S AGE TEX DAYS. 



The large vulcanoid to the right of the center of the picture 
Is Copernicus. The location of Murus Rectus or the '' Straight 
Wall" is marked by the first angle in the course of our long- 
southern tour. (See Fig. 42). Tycho may be identified as the 
deep, symmetrical vulcanoid about an inch below the upper 
margin of the picture. (See also, Fig. 45.) Newton marks the 
limit of this tour and may be seen in the extreme upper part of 
the picture, near the '^terminator," or line of illumination. 

(I.ick Observatory.) 










FIG. 42. MARE NUBIUM AND SURROUNDINGS. 

The large vulcanoid near the lower margin of this plate is Co- 
pernicus. The dark line about one inch in length, at the angle 
in our course, in the upper part of the picture, is the shadow of 
Murus Rectus, or the "Straight Wall." (See Fig. 43). 

(Lick Observatory.) 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 151 

and wondered again if the agencies of fire and water 
had been at work in this region. 

The captain of the ship caused the craft to soar at a 
vertical distance of three miles above the valleys and 
the canyons beneath us in order to give us an intelligent 
glimpse of this wonderful character of detail; and as 
the ship gently floated along the brows of the moun- 
tains, I looked upon these giant, dark-faced obelisks 
with millions of tons of rock heaped in great confusion 
about their bases, with intense interest. I felt inclined 
to believe they were the chimneys to the place of eter- 
nal punishment, and wondered if it were possible for the 
woeful regions of perdition to appear any less inviting. 

The countless little bleb-shaped eminences, or knobs, 
with vents about their summits, resting on the mesas 
in the low-lands, when viewed collectively from an alti- 
tude of three miles and thought of apart from the emi- 
nences of other characters intimately associated, and 
often intermingled, with them, reminded me of a 
prairie-dog town in northwestern Texas or in New 
Mexico, on a stupendous scale. When observed and con- 
sidered along with every other variety of formation 
within the sweep of vision, the whole region resembled 
the ruins of a limitless or continuous city on a gigantic 
scale after all the combustible matter had been licked 
up by the hungry flames of a great conflagration and 
the chimneys and the walls left partly intact. 

In some respects this extensive region resembles a 
colossal honey-comb. And deep soundings of the vents 
of every order in the surface found no bottoms; and 
large stones which we dropped into these gaping aper- 
tures often awakened no echo. 

The whole region extending for hundreds of miles in 
every direction from Tycho is one of mighty cataclysms 



152 TO THE MOON AND 

of appalling heights and depths, and is certainly a mar- 
velous specimen of the lunar landscape — the most grew- 
some district on the face of the moon. 

Prof. Galvan, the scholarly and talented young Irish- 
man who was one of the scientific men of our party, 
compared this forsaken place to the Giant's Causeway, 
Ireland, the supposed ruins of the great bridge built 
across the English Channel by Finn McCull, the Irish 
giant, to make a way for a Scottish giant who had chal- 
lenged him to come over to meet him in a "bout." 

Mr. Vanderlip declared that this region in question 
appeared to him very much like the Mauvaise Terres of 
southwestern Dakota; but truly I do not exaggerate 
when I tell you that the sensation which the Giant's 
Causeway or the Bad Lands inspires is that of a little 
paradise in comparison with that which is induced by 
this particular region in this desolate and forsaken 
world — ^the moon. 

I am truly tempted to say that if the Creator should 
see proper to place upon me after death and the Judg- 
ment a severe punishment for unrighteous living dur- 
ing my sojourn on earth, and any part of it should be 
left to me, I would pray Him to inflict upon me in His 
enforcement of Divine laws almost any punishment in 
preference to that of a life of eternal exile or imprison- 
ment in the dreary solitudes of the canyons and the 
labyrinths in the regions about Tycho. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

FROM TYCHO TO NEWTON via 

LONGOMONTANUS AND 

CLAVIUS 

After a stay of two and a half hours at Tycho we 
sped our flight for Newton, a ring mountain located 
about seven hundred miles almost due south of this 
point and very near the moon's south-pole. 

The inducement that led the selenographers to extend 
this sidetrip on to Newton was the steep, lumpy, tower- 
ing walls of this structure as presented under the tele- 
scope and a low sun. 

Thirty minutes after we left Tycho I descried far in 
the distance ahead Longomontanus, an irregularly- 
walled valley ninety miles in diameter and with a floor 
fourteen thousand feet below the crest of its rim. 

The inner slopes of its ramparts, I observed, were 
exceedingly rough and varied, and its floor was very 
uneven and dotted with many rough, irregular peaks 
and a great variety of other details. 

As our ship floated along for some twenty minutes 
almost above the border of this great cavity, at an alti- 
tude of fifteen miles, we had an excellent, prolonged 
view of it in almost its entire length and breadth. 

153 



154 TO THE MOON AND 

At seven o'clock we reached Clavius, the largest and 
in every way the most wonderful of all the depressions 
ordinarily classed under the head of walled valleys. 

This titanic cavity is almost circular, is one hundred 
and forty-two miles directly across the center, and 
covers an area of sixteen thousand square miles; and 
two of the five, large crater pits lying wholly within the 
boundary of its floor are each twenty-five miles in dia- 
meter. It is twelve thousand feet in depth, and the 
plateau on the outside of its border is almost on a level 
with the top of its ring. 

In other words, this depression is in every way so 
immensely large that its tremendous wall, if extended 
in a straight line, would reach from Nashville, Tenn., 
to Chicago, 111. ; and its floor is sunken so far behind 
those huge ramparts that the lofty wall which sur- 
rounded us as we stood at its center was at every point 
entirely beyond our horizon. 

At half past seven o'clock we left Clavius and pur- 
sued the bearing leading directly to destination. 

After a continuous flight of one hour and thirty min- 
utes we reached Newton and our craft came gently to 
rest on a narrow terrace near the summit of this rough, 
towering relief. 

This day had been one that called for an extra amount 
of physical exertion on the part of all, and one full of 
exciting experiences as well ; and for these reasons the 
captain, instead of sending out at once an exploring 
party on foot as was his custom on reaching the end of 
a long flight, advised and urged that we hurriedly pre- 
pare and eat our evening meal, get everything in readi- 
ness for the next day's journey, and retire for sleep and 
rest. 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 155 

At five o'clock on the morning following our arrival 
at Newton twelve of our number — ^all except Dr. Whar- 
ton, Mr. Shipley and Dick Prouty — bound together in a 
chain by means of a long cord began the ascent of the 
mighty mountain ring that towered one thousand and 
seven hundred feet above the terrace on which rested 
the ship. We reached the crest in a climb of two hours. 

Newton appears in a photograph, or under a telescope 
of high magnifying power and a high angle of illumina- 
tion, to be both circular and symmetrical ; but it is 
neither. Its shape is somewhat that of an elongated 
ellipse; and its height is not uniform, the bulwarks in 
a number of places being breached half way to the l)ase, 
and at least two peaks on the crest of its rim rising to 
an altitude of more than twenty-four thousand feet. 
The vertical distance from the summit of the tallest 
peak to the lowest point in the depression is almost five 
miles, a depth so great that neither earth nor sun is 
ever visible from a great part of its floor. 

Newton is one of the most awe-inspiring of the great 
vulcanoids, challenging Copernicus and Clavius in all 
the points of magnitude and grandeur, and is the deep- 
est known depression on the face of the moon. 

While at this place Mr. Shipley, the stenographer, 
was the most despondent person I ever saw. 

He expressed a sincere desire to return to earth and 
insisted that v/e depart at once for home. He refused 
to go out with the exploring party at Newton and re- 
tired to his bunk in the ship. 

At Tycho, the day before, he was struck by a flying 
missile, and his thumb was almost severed from his 
hand. For two days he had not appeared very cheer- 
ful, and the injury he received at Tycho together with 
the tomb-like appearance that the great chasms took 



156 TO THE MOON AND 

on, due largely to the black shadows cast by a low sun, 
had perhaps much to do with precipitating his violent 
attack of despondency. 

At twelve o'clock, noon, when we returned to the ship 
we found lying on the table a type-written letter bear- 
ing Mr. Shipley's signature. Because the wording of 
this message describes, in a sense, so completely the 
feelings that a rugged lunar landscape inspires when 
beheld for the first time, I quote it verbatim. It read 
as follows : 

Newton, Luna. 
Dec. 29, 1914. 
Dear Friends : 

There is such a sameness about all those lunar land- 
scapes — always boundless plains, monstrous peaks, 
stupendous parallel mountain ranges, chasms and black 
shadows, or crater rings either with or without central 
mountain masses. 

I am tired of those endless plains, towering summits, 
and countries of death and desolation. I want to see no 
more of those silent landscapes, black, tomb-like 
chasms, and frightful solitudes. Let us leave those 
barren deserts that life has quitted forever. Let us, I 
pray, fly at once from this world of eternal silence with 
its apocaliptic visions and its sepulchers that the Angel 
of Death has closed with icy hands and return to our 
earthly paradise. 

Yours sincerely, 

Warren N. Shipley. 

Mr. Shipley was a stenographer of great merit and 
Capt. Ewald's private secretary. He was amanuensis 
for Profs. Monahan, Gal van, and Rider, also, and often 
took short dictations from the rest of us, for small 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 157 

"tips," when not rendering services for his immediate 
employer. 

Owing to Mr. Shipley's official relations to Capt. 
Ewald, it appeared to us that the great promoter of the 
Lunar Expedition was about to lend his influence in 
favor of an immediate departure for home ; but when 
we took the vote on the proposition, both the captain 
and his official scribe were quickly overruled by an over- 
whelming majority. 

Truly I have never been able to understand why Mr. 
Shipley could not appreciate the grandeur in all the 
wonderful landscapes that presented themselves at 
every point along our pathway. He was one of the 
brightest young men I ever knew, an excellent scholar, 
and a specialist, along some lines, without a parallel. 
Beyond the narrow limits of the particular work he 
was employed to do during the voyage he took com- 
paratively no interest; while every one else, even to 
Dick Prouty the colored man, was able to discover in 
the wonderful views constantly about us during our 
tour of the moon plenty to stimulate to a high degree 
his curiosity and a lively interest in looking patiently 
and studiously into the details of this foreign and life- 
less world. 

Profs. Monahan and Gal van said that Mr. Shipley 
was, without doubt, struck at Tycho by a meteoric par- 
ticle weighing perhaps not more than an ounce. 

Immediately after this unfortunate event the study 
of meteoric bodies by means of direct observation was 
taken up by the astronomers and seienographers. In 
due course of time they discovered that the whole of 
the moon's surface had, during the past ages, been 
pounded all over by meteoric stones many of which, no 
doubt, weighed several tons and that most of the smal- 



158 TO THE MOON AND 

ler bodies heaped in the clefts, the gorges and the ra- 
vines and scattered over the floors of the ring moun- 
tains, the walled valleys, and the lava seas were origi- 
nally the fragments of meteoric bodies. 

Countless numbers of meteoric stones come to the 
earth daily. The resistance offered by the atmosphere 
converts them almost instantly into heat and light, and 
for this reason comparatively few ever reach the earth's 
surface ; and those that do come to the ground produce 
a rumbling sound as if to give due warning of their 
approach. When thus set ablaze, they are called me- 
teors or shooting stars. 

Not a meteor ever flashes across the lunar sky. As 
there is practically no atmosphere about the moon to 
convey sound and to convert them into heat and light, 
these ccld, dark, flying missiles approach the moon 
noiselessly, unobserved, and in perfect state and bom- 
bard the surface sometimes singly and sometimes in 
showers ; therefore, a traveler on the moon knows noth- 
ing of their approach nor even their presence until they 
strike the surface with great force and the fragments 
fly off in all directions. 




FIG. 43. ASPECT OF MURUS RECTUS, OR THE 
"STRAIGHT WALL." 



(Moreux's "A Day in the Moon," The Frederick A. Stokes Co.,N. Y., Publishers.) 




FIG. 44. ENLARGED VIEW OF THE RAY SYSTEM 
ABOUT TYCHO. 

This, the most extensive of the ray systems of the moon has 
its center in Tycho. The rays of this system should be compared 
with those which have their centers in Copernicus, Kepler and 
Aristarchus. (See Figs. 48 and 49). 

(Yerkes Observatory.) 



CHAPTER XXV 

A THREATENED ENCOUNTER 

WITH SELENITES AT 

GASSENDI 

At one o'clock in the afternoon of this same day we 
took our leave for Copernicus, by way of Schiller, Shick- 
ard and Gassendi. 

From all points in the vicinity of Newton the sun is 
always seen far down on the northern horizon ; and, as 
a result of a constantly low sun in this extreme polar 
region, the degree of cold is all the time exceedingly 
great. 

Capt. Ewald and others gave it as their opinion that 
when we returned to gather up the equipment we had 
left temporarily at Copernicus which is located very 
near the moon's equator and was at this time under a 
pretty high angle of illumination, we would not be able 
to endure the intense heat at the surface and would on 
this account be forced to leave the biplane behind and 
to pursue rapidly our westward course at a great alti- 
tude and a high speed to escape the burning rays of the 
sun. 

After traveling at the limit of our ship's speed al- 
most due north for about one hour and forty minutes, 
I sighted in the distance ahead and to our right a tre- 

159 



160 TO THE MOON AND 

mendous elevation which on our nearer approach proved 
to be a very large isolated ring mountain. 

It was a long way off, and I could see only the outer 
slope of the wall next to us. Because our time was ex- 
tremely limited, we did not vary our course to approach 
it but kept our bearing straight ahead. The selenog- 
raphers informed us that this stupendous structure was 
Schiller. 

At half past three o'clock, after having traveled in a 
direct line about nine hundred miles, our ship crossed 
the south wall of Shickard, a great ring plain challeng- 
ing Clavius in all its magnitudes. 

As this structure possessed no characteristics out of 
the ordinary except that of its immense size in every 
way, we did not descend to the surface at this point. 
After passing directly across the center of its floor and 
above its north wall, we changed our course and pur- 
sued a bee-line for Gassendi which is almost on the 
direct route from Shickard to Copernicus. 

At five o'clock in the afternoon we reached Gassendi, 
a rough, elongated vulcanoid fifty-four miles in trans- 
verse diameter, and with a prominent central mountain 
mass and ramparts reaching an altitude of nine thou- 
sand and six hundred feet. Its wall is invaded on the 
north side by a crater ring eighteen miles in diameter, 
and terraced both within and without with the usual 
segmental ridges or landslips. 

The neighborhood of Gassendi is diversified by a vast 
number of mounds and ridges of exudated matter and 
traversed by enormous chasms and clefts which exceed 
one mile in width and sixty miles in length. 

After passing across the floor of this structure the 
ship descended and came to a position of rest on a 
smooth and level spot of surface in an exceedingly shal- 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 161 

low, walled valley about forty miles north of the moun- 
tain ring. 

Not many of the ranges and the peaks in the vicinity 
of this particular relief are on a scale so gigantic as 
those about Tycho and Newton, but the details are 
rough and varied in a degree and a way to make this 
one of the most dismal solitudes we were in at any time 
during our tour of the moon. 

But the strangest, most interesting, and most excit- 
ing experience I had at any time during our travels on 
our satellite was a threatened encounter at this place 
with Selenites. 

You are no doubt aware of the fact that the conduct 
of some of the members of every exploring party on all 
occasions like this one is such as to place not only their 
own lives, but the lives of all the rest of the party as 
well, in jeopardy, if not wholly at the mercy of the 
native inhabitants. This is just what happened to us 
on this particular occasion. 

Immediately after the craft came to the surface, 
Capt. Ewald hastily organized the whole company, with 
the one exception of Prof. Rider, into an exploring party 
and commanded them as follows : 

"Boys, come right along now with me, we are going 
out for a short tramp and a little climb among the foot- 
hills of the mountains. Our time is somewhat limited, 
and we must be back at the ship by seven o'clock." 

Although the rays of the sun were blistering hot, 
when they struck us squarely, we promptly and hastily 
bound ourselves together by means of a cord and filed 
along after our leader by way of a lonely and unbeaten 
path through the dark shadows of the mountains cast 
in the narrow valley lying between two parallel ranges. 



162 TO THE MOON AND 

At the expiration of about ten minutes, during which 
time we were in a pretty lively trot, the captain sud- 
denly called a halt and commanded us to ascend the 
mountain slope to our right. 

Within fifteen minutes more we had worked our way 
up the steep acclivities to the crest of the squatty range 
of mountains of uniform height, which lay wholly with- 
in the shadow of a far more elevated range. We fol- 
lowed the crest of this ridge for perhaps a mile and 
then stopped, facing a series of stupendous cliffs one 
above another, just across the valley which we had 
left, rising by terraces at a slant of about 60° to an 
altitude of perhaps a thousand feet above the crest of 
the mountain chain upon which we stood. 

These steep slopes were neither very even nor very 
smooth. And in color they were variegated, as revealed 
by the bright rays of a high sun reaching well down 
the declivities toward the level of the valley beneath 
us. In fact I recognized upon the faces of this series of 
inclines almost, if not quite, all the colors seen in the 
rainbow of the sky, in all their varying degrees of hue. 
Truly I had not, up to this time, seen anything in 
rugged nature quite like it. 

Here on the crest of this low range of mountains 
upon which we stood commenting on the sight before 
us so unusual, Capt. Ewald sat down in the dark shadow 
of the towering range at our backs as we faced the 
many-colored cliffs, and at the same moment spoke as 
follows : 

"Now, boys, go on with your tramping, climbing, and 
sight-seeing and do not be gone over thirty minutes, for 
we are to leave at seven o'clock for Copernicus; and 
Prof. Galvan and I will remain right here until you 
return." 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 163 

Prof. Monahan then quickly flashing his eyes around 
at the individual members of the crowd, started off 
without a moment's delay along a tortuous, dangerous, 
unbeaten path leading down the long and steep declivity 
in front of us and at the same moment spoke as follows : 

'1 am your leader now, boys, so follow me/' 

All, except Capt. Ewald and Prof. Galvan, still bound 
together by means of a long, hempen cord promptly fol- 
lowed in file. 

Within a few minutes we reached a narrow ledge, or 
rather a flange-like projection, some three hundred feet 
down the slope, overhung by a long, craggy brow of the 
mountain. 

Here as we stood on this naiTow projecture at a 
vertical distance of perhaps eight hundred feet above 
the valley beneath us, but still in plain view of the varie- 
gated cliffs. Prof. Monahan began to point out on the 
steep inclines in front of us, various objects of interest. 

He spoke fluently and at the same time in an intelli- 
gent way and an entertaining style, as if unmindful of 
all else besides, while we busied ourselves by attentively 
listening to every sentence he uttered and by viewing 
the strange sights in rugged and picturesque nature 
about us. 

Presently Mr. V/aite discovered high up on the face 
of one of the steep slopes a fairly good representation 
of a human face, and pointed it out. At first it was 
rather dim and appeared merely as a rough etching on 
a plain surface. There were the chin, the mouth, the 
nose, the eyes, the forehead, and all. And truly the 
human features were in a general way exceedingly 
good. 

After gazing steadily for a few minutes upon the 
lineaments of this figure I perceived dimly outlined a 



164 TO THE MOON AND 

body, to which this head with a human face was at- 
tached, slowly developing. In another moment every 
one had discerned the new developments, which caused 
us to create some little disturbance as we stood in a 
huddle on the ledge. Then the figure rapidly rose up 
in high relief and began to take on all the shades of 
color necessary to develop itself into a perfect whole. 

About the time this representation began to take on 
the relief form, I discovered that the face had slightly 
changed its expression from that of unconcern to one 
denoting at least a small degree of displeasure and was 
looking off in a different direction. 

This figure, as stated in a foregoing paragraph, was 
almost that of a human form, and its color somewhat 
that of the background upon which it rested. Up to 
this moment I had thought of and recognized it as 
being a part of the background ; but presently it was 
clearly manifest that it was foreign to the solid matter 
upon w^hich it rested. 

In the meantime Prof. Brunor, half in earnest and 
half in jest, said: 

''Boys, I'll tell you what that is — it's a Selenite." 

And just as he uttered these words. Profs. Thorsen 
and Purnell exactly at the same moment pointed out, 
just above it, on the same slope, another figure similar 
to this one. It, too, appeared at first as a dim etching, 
but rapidly developed fully into high relief and took on 
the various shades of the color of that part of the cliff. 

The former of the two strange figures that had mys- 
teriously presented themselves developed on a pale-blue 
background, while the latter rose up on a pale-yellow 
part of the slope ; and these "painted or sculptured sim- 
ilitudes of the products of the imagination," as Prof. 
Galvan called them, were almost the color of the respec- 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 165 

tive surfaces upon which they unfolded themselves — 
the prominence of outline in each case being brought 
out largely by heavier shadings of their original color. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

A THREATENED ENCOUNTER 

WITH SELENITES AT GAS- 

SENDI— (Continued) 

Interest then began to pick up lively, and a rapid and 
close search, high and low, for more of those marvelous 
creations was at once begun with great vigor by every- 
one. 

Within five minutes we had jointly located a dozen or 
more of those wonderful existences scattered here and 
there on the faces of the cliffs in front of us ; and they 
so much resembled one another, both in form and facial 
expression, that it was with the greatest difficulty that 
we were able to point out any distinguishing marks of 
difference between them. 

"Mr. Monahan, you reckon these are real things ?" in- 
quired Dick Prouty. 

"There is no doubt in my mind, Dick, about their 
being living entities,'' replied Prof. Monahan, "but 
there is some question as to whether they are material 
or spiritual existences." 

Finally Prof. Knowlton suggested that we approach 
them for the purpose of close inspection. Prof. Mona- 
han at once gave us permission to follow out the pro- 
posal. 

166 



^^-H.^^. 



-t* ^* 



« t ^ ' Iw .,^ . 









! 







FIG. 45. TYCHO, LONGOMONTANUS, CLAVIUS, ETC. 

The deep, symmetrical vulcanoid with a prominent central 
cone, located very near the center of the picture is Tycho. The 
roughly walled valley to the right of and upward from Tycho, 
with a triple cone off the center of its floor, is Longomontanus. 
The large walled valley in the upper part of the picture, with 
five crater pits on its floor is Clavius. The large vulcanoid 
adjacent to Clavius and almost on the "terminator,'' or the line 
of illumination, with its floor wholly within the shadow is 
Blanchianus. 

(Yerkes Observatory.) 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 167 

Fortunately we readily found an easy path leading 
down the declivity ; and as we drew nearer, hundreds of 
these mysterious, grotesque objects developed on the 
faces of the inclines in front of us, across the valley. 
And like benumbed bees beginning to revive under the 
influence of the warm rays of a morning sun, they be- 
gan to move lazily upward on the acclivities to greater 
heights. At last we got them on a pretty lively move, 
when it became clearly manifest to all that they were, 
at least to all appearances, real things of life. 

Finally we charged them as rapidly as our strength 

and the surroundings would allow, but our approach 

was necessarily slow ; and their upward movements on 

. the steeps, which were rapid in comparison with ours, 

caused them to unfold themselves by thousands. 

If in no way molested these strange creatures re- 
mained quite still and invisible, because like the chame- 
leon they took on completely the color of the surface 
upon which they perched or rested for any considerable 
length of time. When in any way disturbed sufficiently 
to cause them to shift their positions on the cliffs or to 
become frightened or angered, they gradually but 
slowly became perceptible, their delineations appearing 
dimly first, after which they rapidly developed into re- 
lief forms. 

These mysterious but intelligent-looking entities were 
in general appearance somewhat like human beings, but 
did not possess the same physical proportions. 

They had toes, feet, and legs like a chicken, appeared 
to be about the size and weight of a human being, and 
stood v/ith their bodies erect. Their necks were long, 
straight, and slender, their heads large and round, and 
their eyes, nose, and chin very prominent. They had 
neither wings nor arms proper, but instead, a kind of 



168 TO THE MOON AND 

adjunct resembling arms whfch joined their bodies at 
their shoulders. These appendages they drew into a 
coil when in a position of rest, but which they extended 
when rapidly shifting their positions. 

They had no kind of protective tissue, such as hair 
or nails, on the body or on any parts of the body, to 
protect them from the extreme cold, but seemed to wear 
a kind of artificial head-dress, and a scant covering of 
some sort for the protection of the whole body. 

On account of the steepness and the great irregulari- 
ties of the slopes it was not possible for us with our 
means of moving about to get near them; and any 
desperate or unusual attempt on our part to approach 
them caused them to make their way rapidly to greater 
altitudes, which they did by running up the acclivities 
on their toes and beating the air with their rudiments 
of arms with great speed and force. They took care to 
keep well their distance at all times, uttered not a sound 
of any kind, and stared wildly at us like owls. They 
moved about simultaneously in large, compact squads, 
appeared to be armed with some sort of artificial 
weapon of defense, and indicated by their general man- 
euvers that they would, if pursued too closely, do us 
violence. 

Within thirty minutes after we discovered the first 
of these strange creations, there were no less than ten 
thousand of them assembled on the upper cliif s in plain 
view of us. They did not seem to be able to fly, yet 
they congregated rapidly; and as we were not able to 
discover their approach, our final conclusion was that 
they were all about us in great numbers from the first 
and that the disturbance we created merely brought 
them into prominence. 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 169 

As their number increased, they became somewhat 
tamer and manifested a decided tendency to set upon us 
for battle. Pi'of. Thorsen excitedly drew his revolver 
and fired several shots at the Selenites at long range, 
but to no perceptible effect. 

But the m.ost mysterious thing that came directly un- 
der my observation was the fact that the pop of fire- 
arms or a threatened stroke of violence of any kind on 
our part caused them to explode without report and 
rapidly disappear in the form of smoke. No sooner 
would they disappear in this way, than they would re- 
appear in another place not far from their original 
positions. 

Prof. Monahan commanded us not to resort to any 
means of violence against them, as they might have 
some means of destroying us instantly in retaliation. 

We then retraced our steps to the mountain crest 
where we left Capt. Ewald and Prof. Galvan and there 
found them impatiently awaiting our retura. 

**When we get back," said Prof. Monahan just before 
we reached the top of the incline, ''let Mr. Shipley re- 
late our experiences on this venture." 

"You have missed what might have been the most 
exciting and interesting experience of your lives," said 
Mr. Shipley after connecting up with Capt. Ewald and 
Prof. Galvan. 

"Well, what is it?" inquired Prof. Galvan. 

'We ran into a large colony of Selenites just across 
the valley — no joke," said Mr. Shipley in reply. "There 
are ten thousand of them, and eveiy one looks just 
alike." 

"I am fully convinced by the state of things here 
that the moon is not inhabited," responded Prof. Gal- 



170 TO THE MOON AND 

van. "What you saw are only the painted or sculptured 
similitudes of the products of the imagination.'* 

"Imagination — nothing!" exclaimed Mr. Shipley. "We 
all saw them." 

"We saw it all from here," interrupted Capt. Ewald. 
"Line up now and let us make a hasty retreat to the 
ship." 

One strange thing connected with this pompous dis- 
play on the stupendous inclines in front of us was that 
all the prominent members of our company — Capt. 
Ewald, Dr. Wharton, Profs. Monahan, Galvan, Rider, 
Purnell, Brunor, Knowlton, and Thorsen — took com- 
paratively no further interest in the matter and gently 
but persistently refused to enter into any further dis- 
cussion with any of the rest of us, or to express any 
opinion, thereafter, concerning this strange exhibition. 
Every time I asked any question concerning, or made 
any mention of, this wonderful spectacle on the moun- 
tain slopes to any one of the promoters of the expedi- 
tion, he merely smiled without making reply, and 
quickly changed the theme. 

This ostentatious show on the steep declivities was 
to me, and is yet, a profound mystery ; yet, I sometimes 
wonder if the whole drama on the cliffs was not a mo- 
tion-picture effect produced by Capt. Ewald and Prof. 
Galvan from the mountain crest behind us. 

Here are some slight evidences of it: in the first 
place, the big men did not make strange of our story of 
the performance, nor did they appear to take any fur- 
ther interest in it ; in the second place, Capt. Ewald and 
Dr. Wharton urged Mr. Shipley off on this special trip 
while he was still carrying his arm in a swing as a 
result of injuries received at Tycho, when in my opinion 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 171 

he ought to have been in bed ; and in the third place, 
Prof. Galvan carried in his hand, on this trip, a large 
receptacle resembling a suit-case which he said con- 
tained twenty pairs of climbing shoes. 

In my opinion this large suit-case contained the fix- 
tures for producing a motion-picture show, and that 
the spectacle we witnessed on the cliffs was an enter- 
tainment of this kind given by Capt. Ewald and Prof. 
Galvan to break the monotony and Mr. Shipley's spell 
of despondency, and to revive the low-spirited members 
of our party. 

We reached the ship at seven o'clock and without de- 
lay sped our flight for Copernicus which is at a distance 
of seven hundred and ten miles from Gassendi. 

We reached destination at half past eight o'clock in 
the evening, and hovered the ship from the scorching 
rays of the sun, under a brow of the mountain over- 
looking the terrace on which stood the biplane. 

At this time the sun was getting well up overhead, 
and his rays were blistering hot and beam.ed upon us 
with a degree of intensity that v/as unbearable. 

The floors of the lava seas and the eastern slopes of 
the hills and the mountains which for the past few days 
had been exposed steadily and directly to the sun's rays 
were so intensely hot that it would not have been pos- 
sible for anyone to stand for one moment upon them 
with bare feet ; while the thermometer, when exposed 
directly to surfaces and to space that had been lying 
wholly within the shadows, indicated a degree of cold 
reaching far below zero. 

Finding it reasonably comfortable at this place, un- 
der the protection of the massive walls of the ship 
perched on the terrace in the dark shadows of the 



172 TO THE MOON AND 

mountain crags, Capt. Ewald directed that we prepare 
and eat our evening meal, and retire for the "night." 
The orders were promptly carried out, and by nine 
o'clock we were in our bunks. 



CHAPTER XXVn 

FROM COPERNICUS TO GRIMALDI 

via KEPLER, ARISTARCHUS 

AND HERODITUS 

At seven o'clock on the morning following our return 
to Copernicus we took our departure from Grimaldi by 
way of Kepler, Aristarchus, and Heroditus. 

As usual the Petrel, familiarly known among the 
members of our party as Old Trusty, led in the flight; 
but on account of the extremely high degree of heat at 
Copernicus at that particular time, caused by the ver- 
tical rays of the sun, every one took passage in the ship 
except aviator Thorsen who alone flew the biplane 
throughout most of the day. 

This was the morning of December 30, the close of 
the first week of our travels on our satellite. During 
this time I observed that the moon's surface, every- 
where it had come under my observation, is solid rock 
of the hardest character and of untold depth, with 
scarcely a dust of soil or the vestige of the signs of life 
in any form upon it. I discovered also that the valleys 
everywhere are deep and sharp, the declivities exceed- 
ingly steep and rough, and the extremes of heat and 
cold inconceivably great. 

173 



174 TO THE MOON AND 

I wondered to what great cause this barren and deso- 
late wilderness owes its existence ; and after a little re- 
flection it became manifest that these sterile and de- 
serted regions owe their lone and unfruitful conditions 
wholly to the absence of an atmosphere of any consider- 
able amount, upon which the natural process of wea- 
thering in all its forms wholly depends. 

Without an atmosphere enveloping the earth to a 
great depth there could be neither the sharp and fre- 
quent changes in the weather to pulverize the solid 
rocks, nor the actions of winds and water to transport 
this powdered substance to the low-lands to deposit it 
as soil. 

In other words, without any air surrounding the earth 
there could be neither atmospheric agents at work, nor 
erosion, to which alone the broad and fertile valleys 
and the wide-extended plains on every grand division 
on the face of the earth with their teeming millions of 
stored-up wealth of every form owe their origin and 
existence. 

And directly to these processes of weathering, and 
indirectly to the atmosphere itself, are due also, largely, 
the wide distribution of plant and animal life and every- 
thing that lends beauty and tenderness to an earthly 
landscape. 

The earth's atmosphere is a great blanket almost 
two hundred miles thick and covering the entire surface 
of the earth embracing two hundred millions of square 
miles. 

After an experience of one full week in a world 
totally barren and with such extremes of protracted 
heat and cold and with scarcely the vestige of air sur- 
rounding it, I was led to see that the atmosphere of the 
earth is a great reservoir of heat which it, in its various 




FIG. 46. MOON'S AGE TWENTY-ONE DAYS. 



On this plate is shown the entire route of our long southern 
tour to Newton. 

(^Lick Observatory-) 



f' 


^ " ■ '-'^g^^H 


Y 










^.,^^^^ 'SI^B 



FIG. 47. GASSENDI AND SURROUNDINGS. 

The large vulcanoid near the center of the picture is Gassendi. 
Note the long*, deep rifts on the floor of this ring mountain. 

(Nasmyth's "Moon.") 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 175 

movements, economically and at the proper time deals 
out where it is most needed. 

In other words, a little reflection taught me that this 
great reservoir of heat, in its immense expanse and 
depth, constantly shifting from colder to warmer re- 
gions and vice versa, laden with food and heat for ger- 
minating and feeding plants in regions where this 
would not otherwise be possible is not only the greatest 
force in distributing heat and tempering climates in 
every region on earth, but in a true sense the greatest 
means of transportation in existence. 

At forty minutes past nine o'clock, after having trav- 
eled a distance of about three hundred and twenty 
miles, we reached Kepler. 

This formation we found to be a deep, circular crater 
ring somewhat smaller than Eratosthenes and in every 
way entirely free from deformities. As this structure 
possessed only one prominent feature that distin- 
guished it from most other relief forms of its class — 
that of being the center of a ray-system — ^we continued 
our flight. 

We arrived at Aristarchus and Heroditus at one 
o'clock p. m. and descended to the surface. 

Heroditus is approximately twenty-four miles in 
diameter and has peaks on the crest of its ring four 
thousand and five hundred feet high, while Aristarchus 
is twenty-eight miles across the center and has peaks 
on its rim whose summits reach an altitude of eight 
thousand feet above its floor. Both are deep and rugged 
and lack symmetry, but are truly most interesting ob- 
jects of study, both in their contour and in all their 
minor details. 

These two great craters are so close together that 
they almost invade each other, and Aristarchus is the 



176 TO THE MOON AND 

center of a ray-system. The floor and the inner slopes 
of this ring mountain form the brightest spot on the 
visible hemisphere of the moon, and constitute the only 
area that can be seen from the earth through a tele- 
scope, on the night side of our satellite. The surface 
within the ring is composed of a material that fairly 
gleams in the sunlight and gives off a phosphorescent 
light in the dark. This led the great English mathe- 
matician and astronomer. Sir William Herschel, to con- 
clude that it was a volcano. This particular distin- 
guishing feature is the peculiar characteristic that led 
the selenographers and astronomers among our number 
to visit this point. 

A gigantic rent in the surface takes its origin in the 
wall of Heroditus and angles by several sharp turns in 
the general direction of north. This tremendous cleft 
is almost, if not quite, one hundred miles in length, 
from eight to ten miles in breadth in the widest parts, 
and so deep that we were unable to see the bottom ex- 
cept in places where it had been partially filled by 
meteoric bodies and avalanches of stones. For some 
minutes we stood on the brink of this mighty chasm, 
peering with curious and wondering eyes into its fear- 
ful and awful depths. 

Perhaps next to the study of the enormous mountain 
rings in the points of size, symmetry or the lack of it, 
relative positions, and above all the study of their 
origin and their age, that of the great ray-systems 
which have their centers in Copernicus, Kepler, Tycho, 
and Aristarchus is the most wonderful and interesting. 

These systems in every instance develop under a high 
sun ; and in the cases of Kepler, Aristarchus and Coper- 
nicus the streaks of light are developed on a relatively 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 177 

level surface, while those of Tycho intersect a very- 
rugged surface. (See Fig. 44.) 

Under a high sun and a powerful telescope these ray- 
systems are clearly visible from the earth, and the 
bands of light radiating from these craters extend for 
hundreds of miles and give these vulcanoids the appear- 
ance of luminous bodies or areas. 

But these large craters manifest no such systems at 
the close range of vision under which we inspected 
them. 

At two o'clock in the afternoon Prof. Galvan handed 
the aviators, Profs. Thorsen and Knowlton, the bearing 
or course for Grimaldi, after which the two daring air- 
men mounted the Petrel and at an altitude of a little 
more than two miles sped their flight for destination. 
The craft bearing the rest of the party followed closely 
in the rear. 

After a straight and continuous flight of eight hours 
and twenty minutes, above the moderately smooth and 
gently-rolling floor of the Mare Procelerum or the Sea 
of Tempests, and after traveling a distance of about one 
thousand miles, we reached Grimaldi, a giant ring plain 
equal in the points of magnitudes to Clavius and Shick- 
ard. 

There was nothing of an awe-inspiring nature about 
this great natural structure, because its ring was be- 
yond the sweep of our vision as we stood near the cen- 
ter of its floor. The surface of the inclosed plain is as 
black as rubberoid and as hard as cinder, and bears the 
distinction of being the darkest of all the areas on the 
face of the moon. 

It was late in the evening when we arrived at destina- 
tion, and everybody was weary with the rapidly- 



178 TO THE MOON AND 

changing scenes and experiences in general, of the day ; 
and for this reason, more than for any other, we at once 
ate our evening meal and retired for sleep and repose. 



CHAPTER XXVm 

FROM GRIMALDI TO PETAVIA via 

PALUS SOMNII, LANGRENUS 

AND VENDELINUS 

We left Grimaldi at seven o'clock on the morning of 
December 31. At five o'clock in the afternoon of this 
same day we passed beyond the "limb" of the moon; 
and the earth, which had up to this time been pursuing 
a jerky course across the sky in strict harmony with 
our ship's zigzag direction near the surface, but in an 
opposite course at every angle or turn, disappeared be- 
hind the eastern horizon. 

At six o'clock on this same afternoon we descended 
to the surface and found ourselves wholly within the 
invisible hemisphere of the moon. We were then truly 
strangers in a strange land, a region which no human 
foot had ever trod nor human eye had ever surveyed or 
scanned. 

As we had neither maps nor photographs of the 
moon's invisible hemisphere with the bearings of the 
compass to guide us to objects of interest and study, 
those in authority advised and urged that the biplane 
be separated into its component parts and packed in 
the chests in the ship. The object of Capt. Ewald and 
the selenographers in urging that the rest of the tour 

179 



180 TO THE MOON AND 

be made in the craft was to be in a position to descend 
at any point on the surface at a moment's notice, or to 
rise above the most defiant highlands in case the need 
at any time should demand it. 

For the next two weeks we pursued a course almost 
due west, traveling uniformly about two hundred and 
fifty miles each day, and exploring on foot the re- 
mainder of the time in the vicinity of the craft. 

At seven o'clock p. m. on January 14, 1915, we saw 
the earth rise in the west. This phenomenon was the 
unmistakable evidence that we were again entering the 
moon's visible hemisphere and that we' had completed 
about three-fourths of our tour. 

During the two weeks prior to this date we traveled 
approximately three thousand miles, or nearly half the 
moon's circumference; and from first to last, we had 
had an excellent general view, from our elevated posi- 
tion, of a zone at least a hundred miles in breadth, and 
discovered that the area in general beyond the extreme 
field revealed by the moon's librations possesses every 
type of structure found on the visible hemisphere, — 
craterlets and vulcanoids, ring plains and lava seas, 
honey-comb regions and clumsy relief forms, enormous 
rents and inconceivable altitudes. 

About eleven o'clock a. m. on January 15, while the 
ship was gently soaring at an altitude of about seven 
miles, Capt. Ewald descried in the distance ahead what 
appeared to me to be a long, straight, defiant range of 
mountains extending directly across our path. 

On our nearer approach this mighty range proved to 
be the encircling ramparts of Mare Crisium, or the Sea 
of Crises, the larg;est and most conspicuous of all the 
completely inclosed dark plains upon the face of the 
moon. . 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 181 

In shape this great ring plain is almost that of an 
elongated ellipse. It has a minor axis of two hundred 
and eighty miles, a major axis of three hundred and 
fifty miles, and an area of seventy-eight thousand 
square miles. The wall on the southwestern side has a 
mountainous promontory eleven thousand feet high, 
and the whole area of the inclosed plain has a gray tint 
mixed with a tinge of green. 

Just at twelve o'clock, noon, the craft came to a posi- 
tion of rest on the topmost part of the tremendous 
mountain ring. Here for about one hour Capt. Ewald 
and others were attentively engaged at looking over 
and studying the photographs and maps of the moon 
with a view to determining the course to Palus Somnii 
and Proclus. In due time the bearing was announced, 
after which we pursued the direction, which corres- 
ponded very closely with the transverse diameter of 
the plain. 

At two o^clock, after a steady flight of one hour, we 
reached Proclus. This is a comparatively small struc- 
ture, is located exactly in the comer of Palus Somnii, 
and almost invades the west wall of Mare Crisium. 
(See Fig. 24.) 

The rim and the floor of this little crater, with the 
one exception of those of Aristarchus, constitute the 
most brilliant spot on the moon's visible hemisphere. 
When the sun strikes this crater-plain fairly, it gleams 
with brilliance ; and in other respects, also, it is a most 
remarkable projecture of the ring-mountain type. 

"I have always had a peculiar interest in inspecting 
this particular object of interest and study,'" said Prof. 
Galvan. *'I have observed it hundreds of times through 
a forty-inch telescope and under a high angle of illumi- 
nation, and each time it appeared almost snow-white.'* 



182 TO THE MOON AND 

Paulus Somnii is an extensive diamond shaped region 
covering perhaps fifty thousand square miles and lying 
just west of Mare Crisium and close against the nor- 
thern border of Mare Tranquilitatis, or the Sea of 
Tranquility. Its bounding lines are sharply defined and 
the area they inclose is of a light-brown color and 
covered entirely with short, flat, parallel ridges. 

The floor of the great, adjacent sea is, in color, a 
dark-gray and contains an endless variety of small and 
varied details. 

At this point quite a heated dispute arose among the 
prominent men of our party as to the next general 
course to be pursued. 

Prof. Galvan was at this time in a rather critical con- 
dition. His face was swollen as if he had been violently 
attacked by a case of erysipelas and his eyes were al- 
most closed. For the past eighteen hours he had been 
confined to his bunk. At this place he was up only a 
few minutes, by Dr. Wharton's consent — ^just long 
enough to take a general view of Proclus, Palus Somnii, 
and surroundings. 

Mr. Shipley was threatened with blood-poisoning, due 
to injuries received at Tycho about two weeks prior to 
this time. 

For the foregoing reasons most of our number ex- 
pressed a desire to continue a straight westward course 
and complete the tour of the moon as quickly as pos- 
sible and depart for home ; while others, including Capt. 
Ewald, Prof. Monahan, and Dr. Wharton insisted on 
going a zigzag southern route by way of Langrenus, 
Vendelinus, Petavia and Femurius, four giant ring 
mountains arranged in lineal order along one of the 
moon's meridians. 




FIG. 48. RAY SYSTEMS ABOUT TYCHO, COPERNICUS, 
KEPLER AND ARISTARCHUS. 

Although owing to the high sun and the consequent absence of 
shadows, these vulcanoids hardly appear as elevations, they are, 
under favorable conditions of illumination, perhaps the noblest 
objects on the moon. 

( Yerkes Observatory. ) 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 183 

After much heated controversy the southern route 
was agreed upon. 

At three o'clock in the afternoon we left Proclus and 
Palus Somnii, and after a straight and continuous trip 
of two hours, above the moderately-rolling floor of 
Mare Foecunditatis or the Sea of Fecundity we reached 
Langrenus, a large and beautifully-shaped ring moun- 
tain lying about seven hundred miles almost due south 
of Mare Crisium. 

This structure is ninety miles in diameter, and its 
bulwarks or rim is almost uniformly ten thousand feet 
high. On the crest of its rim there are a number of 
tall peaks ; and a cluster of rugged mountains shooting 
upward to an altitude of three thousand feet marks the 
center of its floor. 

We did not descend to the surface at this place, but 
had an excellent bird's-eye view of this wonderful for- 
mation, at short range, and ample time while passing 
over it to inspect in a general way its great variety of 
details. 

Almost by the time the walls of Langrenus disap- 
peared in the distance behind us, the rim of Vendelinus, 
in front of us, merged into view. This eminence we 
readily recognized by the two small craters which in- 
vade its ring. 

The sun at this time struck its breached walls in 
such manner as to bring into prominence the ridges, 
the precipices and the rugged peaks of which its very 
irregular ring is composed, by contrast with the deep 
shadows, and made it a more awe-inspiring sight than 
any one can possibly imagine. 

Here we descended to the surface and remained one 
hour. 



184 TO THE MOON AND 

This great ring plain contains a very strange feature 
not found about any other class of formations on the 
face of the moon. This peculiar characteristic is an 
extensive valley whose floor is punctured, like a sieve, 
full of holes. These frightful apertures are from two 
hundred to seven hundred feet across, and so deep that 
the huge stones which we rolled into many of them 
often awakened no echo. 

At eight o'clock p. m. we arrived at Petavia, a walled 
valley, with a conspicuous mountain group rising at its 
center, lying due south of Vendelinus. But the distin- 
guishing characteristic about this natural wonder is the 
extreme convexity of its floor. This inclosed area is 
eight hundred feet higher at the base of the central 
mountain group than at its edges along the base of the 
inclosing mountain ring. 

Owing to the unimproved condition of Prof. Galvan, 
Dr. Wharton advised that we remain over a few hours 
at Petavia, which admonition was followed out. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

DEATH OF PROF. GALVAN 
AT PIC-CO-LOM-I-NI 

At one o'clock on the morning following our arrival 
at Petavia Prof. Galvan fell into a state of unconscious- 
ness from which he never fully revived. 

At this time his eyes were completely closed, his 
pulse was weak and unsteady, and his breathing shal- 
low and difficult. Twice between the hours of one 
o'clock and six o'clock of this same morning he revived 
to a semi-conscious state, but appeared to have lost all 
interest in the great work he had undertaken for the 
benefit of science and to know or to care nothing about 
our location and our progress in any way. 

When in a perfect state of health he was exceedingly 
strong, both physically and mentally, and the most 
energetic, enthusiastic, and tireless explorer and seeker 
after facts and truth I ever knew. 

At thirty minutes past nine o'clock he regained con- 
sciousness, to the great and pleasant surprise of all, 
and called Capt. Ewald's private secretary to his bed- 
side. 

"Mr. Shipley, please preserve all my scientific notes, 
which I have had you record, in your own care," spoke 
he, ''and when you return to earth again, place the mat- 

185 



186 TO THE MOON AND 

ter into the hands of Capt. Ewald and Prof. Monahan." 

'1 will follow out your instruction," replied Mr. Ship- 
ley, 'in every detail.'' 

After the lapse of about two minutes more, during 
which time every one remained silent, Prof. Galvan 
feebly addressed all present ; but as his voice was weak 
and his articulation indistinct, I understood only the 
last sentence he uttered, with any degree of certainty. 

'Triends, I regret very much that I am not able to 
look upon and enjoy the sublime and wonderful as- 
pects of nature that throng your pathway at every 
move," he said, "yet after all the greatest venture of 
this life and the most sublime thing of which I can 
conceive is to die." 

Immediately after the close of this utterance he 
again collapsed into a state of total unconsciousness. 

Dr. Wharton gave it as his opinion that the tremors 
and the constant tilting of the ship, which were often 
violent in rapid flights through the atmosphere, were 
making somewhat against his patient's well-doing, and 
advised and urged that we remain indefinitely at Pe- 
tavia — until there was a change in his condition for 
the better. 

Capt. Ewald, when he found that we were likely to 
be delayed for a considerable length of time at this 
point, merely stated that those of us who so desired 
might, if Prof. Galvan's condition improved a little, 
pass time both pleasantly and profitably by making 
short side-trips from this stop, in the biplane. 

Fortunately at ten o'clock Prof. Galvan was much 
better and resting quietly. Then the biplane was 
brought out and Prof. Pumell and the aviators set it 
up; and by twelve o'clock, noon, everything was in 
readiness for a venture on a side-trip. 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 187 

Not many seemed very much inclined to want to go 
out on this occasion; but finally Messrs. Waite and 
Vanderlip, the Rev. Mr. Men'itt, Prof. Brunor, and the 
writer mounted the Petrel with Aviator Thorsen, and a 
flying trip was made to Femurius, a ring mountain of 
about the magnitude of Vendelinus, lying two hundred 
miles south of Petavia. 

To our great disappointment we looked for and ex- 
pected something new along the way in the aspect of 
nature — something out of the ordinary. 

At two o'clock p. m. we arrived at Femurius ; and as 
this structure possessed no interesting features to dis- 
tinguish it entirely from other projectures of its class, 
we w^ere not wholly pleased with this side-trip. 

We found this elevation to be a large ring mountain 
with a number of towering peaks along the crest of the 
south wall, and with the north wall breached or in- 
vaded by a small lava-sea — demolished almost to the 
level of the general surface for at least forty miles in 
its length. 

The biplane passed easily over the low ruins of the 
ramparts and we continued our course around the floor 
and close against the rim of the mountain. 

We were almost one hour in making the circuit. We 
did not descend to the surface at any point within the 
mountain's ring, and on our return trip passed out 
above the breach in the wall and continued our course 
in the direction of Petavia where the ship was moored. 

After a continuous trip of about five hours we 
reached the ship at forty minutes past four o'clock in 
the afternoon. 

At six o'clock a. m. on the following day, Jan. 17, 
after a stay of thirty-six hours at Petavia, Dr. Whar- 
ton stated that in his opinion Prof. Galvan could not 



188 TO THE MOON AND 

recover, and advised that as the sun was encroaching 
on us we might gently pursue our westward course. 

Accordingly at seven o'clock our ship rose to an alti- 
tude that placed us safely beyond the towering reliefs 
and slowly floated away at about one-third the limit of 
its speed, or at the rate of one hundred and twenty 
miles an hour, in the direction of the Altai Mountains. 

Early in the afternoon we arrived at Piccolomini, a 
large, rough, symmetrical vulcanoid more than one 
hundred and fifty miles in circumference, located in a 
wild region which marks the southeastern extremity of 
the Altai range. (See Fig. 52.) 

The approach to Piccolomini was grand beyond de- 
scription. From an altitude of five miles above the 
towering peaks the whole region about us seemed to 
consist of endless and countless parallel ranges of 
mountains, which resembled, very much, stupendous 
breakers at sea moving at high angles to a horizontal 
plain and charging one another in their mad rage in 
the time of a furious storm. 

The ranges from crest to crest are about two miles 
apart and the floors of the gorge-like valleys lying be- 
tv/een them are from one and a half to two miles deep, 
from two hundred and fifty to seven hundred feet 
broad, and covered to considerable depth by meteoric 
bodies and avalanches of stones. 

The acclivities on either side of the valleys are al- 
most vertical and the faces of the cliffs as far upward 
as the eye can reach are covered everywhere with long, 
protruding tongues of hardened lava which reminded 
me of furnace slag full of holes and covered with 
blisters. 

At three o'clock on the morning of Jan. 18, Prof. 
Galvan, the scholarly and talented young scientist 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 189 

whose researches during his explorations among the 
lunar mountains will doubtless be a valuable addition 
to science, passed peacefully away to the great 
unknown. 

And it was on the floor of one of those gorge-like 
valleys, in the black shadows of the mountains of this 
wild and forsaken district lying just outside the north 
wall of Piccolomini, that this young Irish genius, sur- 
rounded by all the rest of the members of our party, 
breathed his last. 

At eleven o'clock in the morning we laid away his 
mortal remains. The surface of the moon everywhere 
in valley and on mountain top is solid rock of the 
hardest character. We knew that to dig a grave 
within any reasonable length of time, with the simple 
tools we had at hand, would be almost next to impos- 
sible; therefore after a brief consideration it was 
agreed that we would, if possible, find in the vicinity 
of the place in which our distinguished friend and asso- 
ciate departed this life a natural sepulcher in the face 
of a cliff and near the level of the valley, and there, 
after appropriate ceremonies, place his mortal remains. 

Finally we found not far away a shelving rock pro- 
truding from a steep incline underneath the projecting 
brow of the mountain. Upon this we placed the bed- 
ding taken from his berth in the ship; and after a 
brief and simple, but appropriate, funeral service con- 
ducted by the Rev. Mr. Merritt, the boy preacher, we 
placed thereon his body robed for the "grave" in his 
arctic suit, and spread over it his two heavy comforts. 

After the burial rites had been performed we slowly 
ascended in the ship to the gentler slopes of the moun- 
tain wall near the crest. Here throughout the re- 
mainder of the day Profs. Monahan, Brunor, and Pur- 



190 TO THE MOON AND 

nell were engaged at painting on one of the incline a 
large cross to mark the last resting place of the mortal 
remains of the deceased. 

Dr. Wharton attributed Prof. Galvan's death to over 
exertion while exploring mountainous regions, and to 
the unequal pressure of the atmosphere enveloping the 
moon and that pent up in the cavities of the body. 

In fact, this was the most difficult physical condition 
we all had to withstand — the drawn-out state of the 
moon's atmosphere — and every one suffered severely 
from this natural state of the elements. 

After the loss of this respected member of our com- 
pany the intense interest in exploration, sight-seeing, 
and the study of lunar topography began to wane. It 
was clearly manifest now that in the hearts of all there 
was a longing for home. From this time on until the 
tour of the moon was completed, we continued to move 
along each day on our journey with the advancing sun- 
light, but made practically no more effort to increase 
our store of scientific knowledge. 




FIG. 49. ENLARGED VIEW OF THE RAY SYSTEMS 
ABOUT COPERNICUS, KEPLER AND ARISTARCHUS. 

The most important features here exhibited are the systems 
of bright rays of Copernicus, Kepler and Aristarchus. These 
three ray systems, though less extensive than that of Tycho, 
taken together constitute the greatest exhibition of the bright 
bands that exist on the face of the moon. (See Figs. 44 and 48.) 

(Yerkes Observatory.) 




FIG. 50. MARE CRISIUM AND XEIGHBORIXG PARTS. 

The roughly circular area with a dark floor, at the left margin 
of the picture is Mare Crisium, or the Sea of Crises. The 
small bright crater pit on the inner slope of this ring plain is 
Proclus. The diamond-shaped district, just outside the wall of 
Mare Crisium and to the right of proclus is Palus Somnii. Up- 
ward from Mare Crisium, and arranged in linear order along the 
left margin of the picture are four large vulcanoids, Langrenus, 
Vendelinus, Petavius and Fernurius. Piccolonini is faintly 
visible in the extreme upper part of the picture and marks the 
most southern point we reached in this field of view. The 
large vulcanoid at the sharp angle near the point at which we 
pass out of the field is Theophilus. (See Fig. 52.) 

(Lick Observatory.) 



--x^ 


f '' ■ 


V*- 




'■w^,^ 


'V 




■ '■'' 


1^ ''''^'V^^^^H 


HA .■"''••-^■"::,,-.-... : 


,.*■■- ' "' - . 


"r^;^ ■ . ■ 



FIG. 51. A LANDSCAPE VIEW OF THE DISTRICT JUST 

OUTSIDE THE NORTH WALL OF PICCOLOMINI. 

(IDEAL.) 

It was here in this grewsome region that Prof. Galvin departed 
this life. The large, black cross on the acclivity at the right 
faces the gorge-like valley in which rest the remains of this 
schollarly young Irishman. (See Fig. 52.) 

(Nasmyth's "Moon.") 



CHAPTER XXX 

FROM PICCOLOMINI TO THE HY- 

GINUS CLEFTS via CATHERINA, 

CYRILLUS AND THEOPHILUS 

At five o'clock on the morning of Jan. 19, we took 
our mournful flight for the Hyginus Clefts by way of 
Catherina, Cyrillus, and Theophilus. 

For about half the distance that separates Piccolo- 
mini from Theophilus we followed pretty closely the 
thread-line of the great valley lying just east of the 
escarpment of the long, curved range of the Altai 
Mountains; and for the remainder of the distance we 
pursued an air line, or a direct course. 

And our ship just moved along at less than one-third 
the limit of its speed throughout almost the whole of 
the forenoon. 

Between the hours of ten o'clock and twelve o'clock 
we were passing across the floors of Catherina and of 
Cyrillus ; and exactly at twelve o'clock, noon, we came 
suddenly upon Theophilus, the monarch of all lunar 
ring mountains. 

Our ship came to a position of rest on a narrow ter- 
race so near the top of its ring that a climb of thirty 
minutes brought us to the bases of the peaks that 
crown the crest. 

191 



192 TO THE MOON AND 

Catherina and Cyrillus are each about two hundred 
miles in circumference. They are roughly circular but 
symmetrical, and have rather squatty ramparts but 
well-defined outlines. They have comparatively gentle 
slopes and shallow floors; and, when viewed from an 
altitude of ten or fifteen miles, exhibit a ruined and 
ancient appearance. 

Theophilus, on the contrary, is in the shape of an 
elongated ellipse, is sixty-four miles in transverse diam- 
eter, and has an altitude of eighteen thousand feet. 
It is strongly ridged all round and has a central moun- 
tain mass composed of several sharp, rough, irregular 
peaks, which covers three hundred square miles and 
rises abruptly to an altitude of six thousand feet above 
the floor of the tremendous basin in which it stands. 
The encircling rampart is divided by concentric, seg- 
mental, terraced ridges which present every appearance 
of being enormous land-slips resulting from the crush- 
ing of their overloaded summits, which have slid down 
in vast segments and scattered their debris upon the 
surrounding plateaus and upon the floor. 

I observed also many radial ridges or spurs leading 
away from the exterior slope of the wall. These I 
easily traced finning away for fully a hundred miles in 
a number of directions until they became such delicate 
objects as to approach invisibility. 

This giant ring mountain invades Cyrillus and ap- 
pears as new and as fresh as if it had just been turned 
out of the mould, which are, within themselves, com- 
petent evidence that it is of much more recent forma- 
tion than either of the other two large vulcanoids with 
which it is intimately associated. 

When viewed from a great altitude, the three large 
crater rings roughly and briefly described in this con- 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 193 

nection are seen to have relative positions that give 
them the appearance of the *'Odd Fellows' Links'' ; and 
it was by this name that Prof. Monahan always there- 
after designated this particular group of formations. 

As we stood lined-up on the crest of this wonderful 
structure and gazing downward into the great bowl- 
shaped depression that the ring incloses and upward 
at the towering summits adorning the crest, I could 
not imagine a more stupendous and interesting excur- 
sion for a mountaineer, a geologist, or a seeker after 
wonderful and sublime aspects of nature than a climb 
about the walls of Theophilus. 

At two o'clock, after enjoying some of the most won- 
derful sights in rugged and picturesque nature, and a 
delightful and refreshing repast served on the crest of 
Theophilus, we pursued a direct line for the Hyginus 
Clefts. 

The late photographs of the moon which we had with 
us clearly indicated that the region we were to pass 
over in this part of the flight was rich in grand scenery 
and instructive objects; but I had lost so much sleep 
during Prof. Galvan's illness that I could not stay 
awake to survey this wonderful district, and retired to 
my berth for sleep and repose. 

I evidently fell at once into a deep sleep, for the next 
thing I knew Prof. Rider pulled me half out of my 
bunk and at the same moment yelled out: 

"Get up, we are at Hyginus. I have just been out 
to see the mighty cleft ; and truly I wish I had not seen 
it, for I fancy it resembles the gateway to perdition." 

"How far are we from Theophilus ?" inquired I, dis- 
covering from a clock across the room that I had been 
asleep two hours and forty minutes. 



194 TO THE MOON AND 

*Tour hundred and eighty miles/' responded Prof. 
Rider, as he hurriedly made his exit from the sitting 
room. 

Within a few minutes I was up, dressed, and in 
every way fully equipped for a tramp atid sight-seeing. 

While I was dressing and equipping myself to go out, 
not a soul was inside the ship; and when I passed to 
the outside, I saw the rest of the company lined up on 
the brink of the mighty chasm about seventy yards 
away. 

In another minute I was present with them and peer- 
ing with great astonishment into this mighty schism 
which extended both to our left and to our right, far 
beyond our ken of vision, and whose broad expanse was 
indicated by the summits of the foothills on its farther 
brink, clothed in the mellow light of the full earth. 

We were not able to see any distance into the ap- 
palling depths of this tremendous rent, because the 
dark shadows cast into it by a low sun gave it the ap- 
pearance of being brim full of smoke as dense and as 
black as was ever puffed from the stack of a locomotive 
or a steam vessel. 

At the time of our arrival at Hyginus the sun was 
not sufficiently high up in the sky to illumine this 
great chasm, and for this reason Capt. Ewald and Prof. 
Monahan insisted on remaining at this place indefinitely 
in order to view it under a high angle of the sun's 
illumination. 

Hyginus itself is just a little structure of the ring 
mountain type, not more than twenty miles in diam- 
eter, but is remarkable for being cleft through the 
center by this enormous rent which is almost two hun- 
dred miles in extreme length, from seven to ten miles 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 195 

in breadth, and from nine thousand to thirteen thou- 
sand feet deep. 

There 'are two arms of this enormous split in the 
surface, both of which take their rise in Hyginus, and 
for this reason it is spoken of as the Hyginus Clefts. 
One arm extends from east to west, and the other from 
northwest to southeast. (See Fig. 54.) 

Fortunately we were not compelled to remain long 
at this point. On the morning following our arrival 
at this place the sun peeping over the low ranges of 
the hills in the distance shone almost directly into the 
end of the eastern arm of the rift and illumined the 
south wall for many miles of its length and for untold 
fathoms down. 

Our ship then descended into this great fissure to 
its greatest depths. In some places the cleft is par- 
tially filled with huge stones, while in other places there 
has been no disturbances whatever in the nature of 
avalanches. The floor of this mighty chasm, where it 
is exposed, is uniformly about one thousand feet in 
breadth; and in some places, where it is bare, it is 
severely troughing or concave, while at other points it 
is convex. 

From our position at the bottom of the rent Messrs. 
Waite and Vanderlip made photographs which show 
perfectly both walls of the fissure. 

Prof. Monahan and Capt. Ewald, after closely in- 
specting this huge rent, said that originally it was 
much deeper than it is now, and that either imme- 
diately, or very early, after the sudden formation of 
the rift, the lava rose and finally, after ages of cooling, 
consolidated into rock. 

This cleft is by far the most magnificent thing of its 
class that we found on the face of the moon. 



CHAPTER XXXI 

FROM THE HYGINUS CLEFTS 

TO ARCHEMIDES via BESSEL, 

LINNE AND THE HAEMUS 

MOUNTAINS 

At nine o'clock on the morning following our arrival 
at the Clefts, we pursued the course for Archemides 
by way of the Haemus Mountains, Bessel, and the 
problematical Linne. 

We first took the direct route for the Haemus Moun- 
tains, a rugged, picturesque high-land system lying 
two hundred and ninety miles northeast of Hyginus, 
and forming a part of the abrupt southern border of 
Mare Serenitatis, or the Sea of Serenity. 

In the point of grandeur, or magnificence, this sys- 
tem of high-lands is really below medium, but is dis- 
tinguished for having near the center of its greatest 
elevation a beautiful vulcanoid about thirty miles in 
diameter, with a floor almost as white as chalk. 

This mountain, called Menelaus, slightly invades the 
adjacent sea; and, when seen from the earth through 
a powerful telescope and under a vertical sun, it is a 
conspicuous crater and shines like a precious gem. 

We did not come to the surface at any point in the 
Haemus Mountains, but continued our course almost 

196 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 197 

straight ahead at a moderate elevation above the floor 
of Mare Serenitatis. 

At half past eleven o'clock, one hundred and twenty- 
miles from Menelaus, out upon the smooth, extensive 
lava sea we passed Bessel, a beautiful, solitary crater 
ring fourteen miles in diameter and about seven thou- 
sand feet deep. Bessel is as perfect in shape as a big 
China wash-bowl, has steep, smooth slopes, and is sur- 
rounded on all sides for many miles around by the 
dark, smooth surface of the Serene Sea. 

At this point we angled severely and pursued the 
course pointing almost due west; and at one o'clock p. 
m. we descended to the surface one hundred and fifty 
miles from Bessel, at the site of the problematical 
Linne. 

Perhaps the reader would be interested to know that 
Linne is a point on the floor of the Sea of Serenity, 
which in the earlier part of the nineteenth century was 
clearly recognized by astronomers as a well-defined 
crater ring seven miles in diameter and one thousand 
feet deep, and that in the year 1866 it suddenly disap- 
peared and has not been seen since except as a faint, 
diffused spot on the dark background of the sea floor. 

When viewed from the earth through a forty-inch, 
reflecting telescope, it had, since the year named above, 
resembled somewhat a great fire light; and for this 
reason some eminent astronomers believed the minia- 
ture vulcanoid had been totally destroyed by a tre- 
mendous eruption. 

This was one of the points on the moon's surface in 
which every one's interest had been centered, even be- 
fore we took our departure from the earth ; but it had 
not, as yet, appeared to any of us that our approach to 
this object of intense concern was so near. 



198 TO THE MOON AND 

Just as we were leaving Bessel, Prof. Monahan began 
to relate the history of the structure under considera- 
tion ; and at the conclusion, when he informed us that 
we would reach Linne within one hour and that this 
point would be our next stop, we could scarcely believe 
our ears. 

As we steadily approached this spot, naturally all 
eyes were on the look-out for a seething lake of fire; 
but instead, the place proved to be a very bright area 
of moderate elevation with a rough detail and a num- 
ber of ragged peaks reaching an altitude of from five 
hundred to a thousand feet and covering something 
over two hundred square miles. 

As we drew near this point I truly entertained grave 
fears that we would really find it to be a lake of un- 
quenchable fire, and keenly felt the sting of disappoint- 
ment when we found it different. 

This little region we found to be as "cold as an ice- 
berg,'' and it was clear to be seen that it had not in 
any degree been disturbed by the agency of heat for 
untold thousands of years or even for ages. 

The selenographers spent the whole of the afternoon 
in carefully examining this district, but the close in- 
spection they gave it revealed nothing out of the 
ordinary. 

At eight o'clock on the following morning we de- 
parted from Linne and pursued the course leading 
directly through the strait that connects Mare Sereni- 
tatis with the Imbrium Sea. 

After traveling in a direct line about one hundred 
and sixty miles and passing through the strait, we were 
confronted by the wall of a large vulcanoid which some 
of our party recognized as being a structure which we 
passed in our flight from Plato to Archemides on Dec. 




FIG. 52. CRATER REGION ABOUT THEOPHILUS. 

The large, sharply-defined vulcanoid with a prominent moun- 
tain mass at the center of its floor, located in the lower part of 
the plate and near the margin of the illumination is Theophilus. 
The large vulcanoid in the upper left-hand corner of the plate 
with its floor in the shadow is Piccolomini. (See Figs. 50 and 
51.) The highland system extending in a gentle curve downward 
and to the right from Piccolomini is the Altai Mountains. 

(Yerkes Observatory.) 




FIG. 53. THE HYGINUS CLEFT. 

(Moreux's "A Day in the Moon," The Frederick A. Stokes Co.,N. Y., Publishers.) 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 199 

27, the day before we began the tour of the moon. 
(See Fig. 35.) From this point we pursued an air-line 
extending in a direction almost due southwest, for one 
hundred and thirty miles to the point where our ship 
was first moored, and thereby completed the tour of 
the moon. 

During the four weeks we were '"circumnavigating" 
our satellite, we kept close on the heels of night — that 
is to say near the "terminator'' or sun-rise line which 
separates the darkened hemisphere from the lighted 
one — in order to escape both the blistering rays of a 
noonday sun and the intense cold of the lunar night, 
and yet have the light of day by which to travel and 
to explore. Besides, the long, black shadows of the 
stupendous mountain masses cast by a low sun added 
an awful grandeur to the rugged and wild scenery con- 
stantly about us on all sides, which the learned men 
admired. 

At this time none of us felt natural, nor did we look 
natural. All complained that nothing tasted right and 
that sleep, such as we were able to secure, was not re- 
freshing. 

Every one's face was spotted and rough, and ap- 
peared as though it had been severely blistered in a 
hot flame and was peeling off, and our hair was as dry 
and lifeless as shredded shucks. 

Our flesh over the entire body was slightly swollen, 
and there was a stiffness in our joints, which made us 
awkward and clumsy at getting about. 

And we all admitted that this great tour had paid us 
well, but were extremely anxious to depart from this 
barren and forsaken world and to fly to our earthly 
paradise. 



CHAPTER XXXII 

REVIEW OF SALIENT FEATURES 

During the tour of our satellite I observed that the 
main objects of general interest relating to the moon's 
topography naturally fall into one of the three follow- 
ing classes: first, the great high-land systems proper; 
secondly, the completely inclosed areas, together with 
their encircling ramparts, including the ring plains, the 
walled valleys, and the vulcanoids; and thirdly, the 
most extensive of the smooth areas with irregular and 
broken borders, or the great lava seas. 

On our tour there came under our observation com- 
paratively but a small part of the moon's surface, yet a 
sufficiently large per cent of it to warrant the writer in 
saying that there are pretty regularly distributed over 
her entire area no less than fifty reliefs worthy of the 
name mountain system. 

Among the greatest of the high-land systems found 
on the visible hemisphere, that came directly under 
our observation, are the Alps, the Caucasus, and the 
Apennines. 

There are also extensive honey-comb regions, often 
embracing thousands of square miles, either inter- 
mingled with the other various characters of the great 
relief forms, or in some other way intimately associated 

200 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 201 

with them. In some places the districts of this partic- 
ular class seem to form the main plateaus, or the 
basilar parts of the mountain masses, from which rise 
the towering peaks. And these needles stand forth 
bare, gaunt, and dreary, sometimes in roughly conical 
shape but more frequently in pyramidal form, and 
under the rays of a low sun present a desolate and 
forsaken appearance. 

Careful observations and estimates during our trav- 
els show that beyond doubt there are on the moon's 
surface no less than forty peaks whose altitudes range 
from fifteen thousand to twenty-six thousand feet, and 
that the average angle of the inclines of the lunar pro- 
jectures of every character is about fifty-two degrees. 

The lowest areas are about ten thousand feet below 
the level of the seas, which makes the moon's total re- 
lief approximately thirty-six thousand feet. 

Owing to the difficulties under which the selenog- 
raphers had to work, there were too many doubtful ele- 
ments in the computations to make the reckonings 
wholly trust-worthy for absolute accuracy ; but in spite 
of the disadvantages that presented themselves at the 
times the estimates were being made, the observations 
and the mathematical calculations unquestionably 
approach a very close approximation. 

Perhaps the most wonderful and interesting of all 
the lunar structures are those of the ring mountain 
type, embracing the ring plains, the walled valleys 
and the vulcanoids proper. 

In diameter these structures range from only a few 
feet to three hundred and fifty miles and are found in 
countless numbers on almost every part of the moon's 
rugged districts. 



202 TO THE MOON AND 

Most of those areas inclosed by ramparts are circu- 
lar, or with only moderate distortions of this outline, 
some are irregular in their contour, and a few are in 
the shape of a half -moon ; and the last-named sub-class 
of structures, which are characterized by the breached 
walls, invariably have their deformed sides turned 
toward or facing the open seas or their embayments. 

The largest of this class of structures called ring 
plains, walled valleys, and vulcanoids or ring moun- 
tains, are more numerous in, and adjacent to the 
rugged districts; while the smaller structures of this 
type, which are almost perfectly circular, symmetrical, 
and smooth, are found principally in the extensive, level 
districts, such as the floors of the ring mountains, the 
sea floors, and the large embayments of the seas. 

Nearly all the great projectures of this class are, I 
observed, arranged in linear order along the general 
course of the moon's meridians and show pretty gen- 
erally a tendency to "spooning," or to elongation of 
the crater, in a general north-and-south direction. The 
smaller structures too belonging to this class have in 
many instances a linear arrangement, and I took notice 
that the linear order of those craters less than a mile 
in diameter is so common that the exceptions are to be 
found in the departures from it. Countless chains of 
craterlets extend from fifty to one hundred miles in 
length, whose links are jammed so closely together 
that their rims invade one another and thus form crater 
valleys. 

Regardless of size the lunar structures of this gen- 
eral class possess the following common characteris- 
tics: first, they are bounded either wholly or in part 
by ramparts in the form of steep ridges whose crests 
are crowned partially at least, with tall, steep, needles 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 203 

either in conical or pyramidal form; secondly, the 
inner slopes of their walls are steeper than their ex- 
terior slopes; thirdly, the inclosed areas in almost 
every instance are lower than the general level of the 
surrounding district ; and fourthly, every structure has 
either a cone or a rugged mass rising at or near the 
center of its floor, or instead, a cone-shaped pit or 
cavity. 

The following differences, as we pass downward from 
the largest to the smallest are to be noted : first, there 
is a progressive increase in the symmetry and fresh- 
ness of finish of these structures; and secondly, the 
walls are less breached, and the slopes of their encirc- 
ling ramparts are steeper and more even. 

The largest completely inclosed ring plain that came 
directly under our observation is Mare Crisium, or the 
Sea of Crises ; the greatest walled valley we visited is 
Clavius ; the most perfectly-shaped craters we saw are 
Tycho and Bessel; the deepest structure of the ring 
mountain type is Newton; the most awe-inspiring, or 
those that possess a solitary grandeur that belongs to 
no other vulcanoid, are Theophilus, Copernicus, and 
Piccolomini ; and the brightest spot on the face of the 
moon is the floor of the vulcanoid, Aristarchus, while 
the darkest spot is the floor of the great ring plain, 
Grimaldi. 

It is scarcely possible for one to form anything like 
a true conception of the real magnitude of one of those 
stupendous lunar craters without viewing it from the 
crest of its ring, from the summit of one of the peaks 
upon its crest, or from a biplane making a flight around 
its floor. 

Kilauea and Mauna Loa, on the island of Hawaii, 
each of which has a diameter of about two and a half 



204 TO THE MOON AND 

miles, are the two greatest known terrestrial craters. 
And in spite of the magnitudes of these tremendous 
apertures, they dwarf to insignificance when compared 
with a favorable view of the Grand Canyon of the 
Colorado ; yet such a part of this wonderful canyon as 
comes within the range of one's vision as he stands on 
a brow of this mighty chasm is a mere pigmy or even 
a Lilliputian by the side of one of the great craters of 
the moon. 

There are on the surface of the moon perhaps not 
less than forty extensive areas called either seas or 
embayments of seas. Those dry, hard, lava plains 
often embrace hundreds of thousands of square miles 
of surface, and contain within their borders no objects 
of prominence except here an isolated mesa, there a 
solitary peak, and yonder a long, squatty, serpentine 
chain of hills cleft in many places at high angles by 
mighty rents. These so-called seas are generally very 
irregular in shape, gently rolling like many of our 
prairies, and bordered by endless chains of fire-scarred 
cliffs. 

The atmosphere enveloping the moon is so highly 
attenuated that it is insufficient to support even the 
trace of a cloud: therefore, there can be no evapora- 
tion, no rain, no erosion, nor any weathering of any 
form in any noticeable degree. As a result the surface 
everywhere is as dry, flinty, and as clean and pure, 
chemically, as a brick-kiln; and the mountains every- 
where are ragged, lumpy, and tall, and have sharp 
edges and steep slopes. 

And as there is no diffusion of solar light, which is 
also due to the rarefied or drawn-out state of the air, 
the shadows of the mountains and of all opaque objects 
on the moon's surface are absolutely black with clean- 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 205 

cut edges — ^the line between the light and shadow being 
as distinct as though drawn by a ruler. Objects only a 
few feet away in the shadow are not visible, while even 
very small objects — objects not larger than a foot-ball 
— ^when exposed to the rays of the sun, are distinctly 
visible at a distance of fifty miles. This distinct vision 
often caused us to under-estimate greatly the distances 
to all objects. 

The whole surface of the moon bears evidences of 
having been pounded all over by meteoric bodies which 
are pretty evenly distributed over the sea floors, but 
heaped in great profusion against the bases of the cliffs 
and the mountain ranges adjacent to the seas, and in 
the gorge-like valleys and the clefts. 

The color of the moon's surface varies from that of 
very bright areas to that which is relatively dark. 

The low, level areas, such as the lava seas and the 
ring plains, are as dark at least as the more somber- 
hued rocks of the earth's surface, or even as emery 
stone; while the more elevated regions are almost the 
color of soft brick. The crests of one or two mountain 
ranges, the summits of a few peaks, and the floors of 
half a dozen vulcanoids are, when viewed under a ver- 
tical sun, almost of a chalky whiteness ; while at least 
one spot on the moon's surface — ^the floor of the great 
ring plain Grimaldi — is almost jet black. 



CHAPTER XXXni 

OF OUR TRANS-ETHEREAL 
FLIGHT FOR EARTH 

It is now just twelve o'clock, noon, on Jan. 21, 1915, 
and Capt. Ewald has just given out the information 
that at two o'clock we are to take our trans-ethereal 
flight for earth. Everyone is joyous over the an- 
nouncement and vigorously moving about getting ready 
for the perilous flight. 

Mr. Shipley is sitting at a table near the center of 
the room taking dictations, in the form of brief notes, 
from the writer; Dick Prouty is preparing the last 
meal to be served on our neighboring little world ; Dr. 
Wharton and Prof. Thorsen are loading on some curios 
which they have gathered in the vicinity of the ship; 
Prof. Knowlton is drilling a hole for a small flag staff 
to mark the place of our arrival at and departure from 
the moon; Profs. Brunor and Rider are at the conden- 
sers compressing air into the chambers in the dome of 
the ship; Capt. Ewald and Prof. Pumell are installing 
a fresh storage battery ; Prof. Monahan is at the great 
telescope adjusting the attachments preparatory to 
taking the spectrum of Alpha Persei ; and Messrs. Van- 
derlip and Waite, and the Rev. Mr. Merritt are about 
one hundred yards away standing quietly on the brink 
of a mighty chasm and gazing into its appalling depths. 

206 




FIG. 54. 



THE MARE SERENITATIS AND 
SURROUNDINGS. 



The Hyginus Clefts are near the upper right-hand corner of 
the plate where we make a sharp angle in our flight. The crater 
Menelaus is located in the Haemus Mountains at the center of 
the plate. The beautifully shaped little crater one inch below 
Menelaus, out upon the floor of the Serene Sea, is Bessel. The 
faint white spot downward and to the right from Bessel is the 
site of the problematical Linne. The strait to the right of Linne 
separating the Caucasus from the Apennines is the Palus Put- 
redinus. The vulcanoid at the right of the strait is Authroly- 

CUS. (See Fig. 55.) (Yerkes Observatory.) 




FIG. 55. THE MARE IMBRIUM AND SURROUNDINGS. 

(Yerkes Observatory.) 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 207 

At fifty minutes past one o'clock we hoisted a small 
United States flag and went on board the ship. The 
roll was then called and the massive steel door closed, 
locked and sealed. Exactly at two o'clock we took our 
departure from that cold, dry, and uninhabited world 
and pursued our homeward flight. 

As the craft sped away through the limitless depths 
of the trackless and changeless void, Dr. Wharton 
slowly and solemnly said: 

"Henceforth it may truthfully be said that the 'Man 
in the Moon' is an Irishman ; but not, however, the first 
man that ever broke the Sabbath.'' 

Throughout the time of our transit we were able 
even by the aid of our small telescopes to follow closely 
the entire course of our tour across the visible hemis- 
phere of the moon and to locate readily thereon all the 
prominent reliefs we visited; and for about one week 
after our departure for home we could by means of the 
great telescope see the large cross near the crest of the 
great mountain range just outside the south wall of 
Piccolomini, which Profs. Monahan, Brunor, and Pur- 
nell painted to mark the last resting place of the mortal 
remxains of Prof. Galvan. 

The transit from the moon to the earth was in every 
way equally as perilous as the one from the earth to 
the moon, and our experiences in general and the scenes 
constantly about us in the heavens were much the 
same. 

At ten o'clock on the morning of Feb. 19, we entered 
the aerial region of our native sphere, and forty min- 
utes later quietly descended f o the surface near Groton, 
South Dakota. 

The advent of our strange-looking craft and our un- 
couth and worn-out appearance created quite a sensa- 



208 TO THE MOON AND 

tion and spread consternation among some young men 
at a cattle ranch near by, who quickly conveyed the 
news of our presence to the inhabitants of the village. 
Within an hour after our arrival nearly every citizen 
of the town of Groton was at the craft. Although 
every face was strange to me, I was truly glad to see 
everybody ; and I was equally delighted to breathe once 
more the atmosphere of earth in its natural state. 

Capt. Ewald placed a guard at the ship inside barrier 
ropes, and then we walked one and a half miles to 
Groton and took a train for Aberdeen, a good town 
about twenty-five or thirty miles west of Groton. At 
this place we bathed, changed our clothing, and got a 
few square meals at the Sherman Hotel, where we were 
royally entertained by Mr. J. E. Hubbard, the 
proprietor. 

Early on the following morning, after some hearty, 
farewell hand-shakes, Capt. Ewald and Prof. Rider, ac- 
companied by Messrs. Waite and Vanderlip, returned 
to the ship to remain indefinitely. Two hours later 
Dick Prouty, Mr. Shipley, the Rev. Mr. Merritt and 
Profs. Thorsen and Brunor left Aberdeen for their sev- 
eral homes in Missouri, Nebraska, Illinois, and Texas. 
And late in the afternoon of the same day the remnant 
of our party consisting of Dr. Wharton, Profs. Mona- 
han, Knowlton, Pumell, and the writer took passage on 
an east-bound train for Chicago, 111., where we arrived 
early on the morning of Feb. 23. From this city Profs. 
Monahan and Pumell at once departed for Philadel- 
phia, Pa., and Prof. Knowlton and Dr. Wharton left 
about noon on a fast south-bound train for their re- 
spective homes in Birmingham, Ala., and Atlanta, Ga., 
by way of Danville, 111. ; Evansville, Ind., and Nashville, 
Tenn. The writer accompanied the last-named of these 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 209 

distinguished men as far south as Madisonville, Ky., 
where with hearty hand-shakes he bade them adieu. 
On the following day at ten o'clock a. m. he reached his 
home at Providence, Ky., a good little town located six- 
teen miles west of Madisonville, on the Madisonville 
and Morganfield Branch of the Louisville and Nashville 
Railroad. 

I can scarcely realize now that I have been to the 
moon. Although I am able to call to mind with dis- 
tinctness all the principal points of interest we visited 
and all of our wonderful experiences both of a pleasant 
and a serious nature, from the time of our departure 
for the moon until our return to earth, the sum total 
appears vaguely to my mind as a wonderful dream, or 
rather as the vision of a world made up of regions or 
districts of the wildest desolation. 

After our departure for the moon, even though I 
realized we were in every way well and thoroughly 
equipped, I very much regretted that I had ventured to 
take this wild flight, because I thought then that I 
foresaw it was not possible for us to get by the dangers 
that would from first to last beset us on every side. 
But since our return to earth, I take an altogether dif- 
ferent view of such a situation. With the exception 
of two perils, the danger arising from the bursting of 
panes of glass due to the expansive force of the pent-up 
air and that originating from the presence of star-dust, 
I truly believe that a voyager making a transit to an- 
other world in an ethereal ship constructed and 
equipped like this one, would be subjected to dangers 
less grave than he would be if he were making a trans- 
Atlantic voyage in one of our best-built modem ocean 
liners. 



CHAPTER XXXrV 

CONCLUDING SUMMARY 

Beyond even the shadow of a doubt in my mind the 
moon was once a fluid haze of light, and after the lapse 
of ages she became a great liquid globe whose surface 
was then a seething ocean of fire. 

Our researches during our tour of the moon reveal 
to us abundantly a world torn and shattered by fearful 
volcanic action. Her surface has been riven and 
cracked all over and is everywhere pierced by extinct 
craters and geysers, whose irregular edges and rents 
testify to the convulsions our satellite has undergone. 

During our travels we crossed quite a large number 
of valleys with round or troughing floors and varying 
in breadth from three hundred to seven hundred feet, 
and in length from twenty to one hundred miles. This 
particular class of valleys is found only far out upon 
the lava plains and slightly resembles river beds with 
gentle fall and gently sloping banks. Countless frag- 
ments of meteoric bodies and of small detached stones 
lying on some of their deeper parts are worn partially 
round like cobble stones found along the water's edge 
in river beds. This effect, Prof. Monahan said, is 
ascribable to no other cause than that of flowing water. 
It appears to me too that the apparently worn condi- 
tion of these rocks is evidence sufficient to support the 

210 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 211 

belief that in the misty past sluices of water flowed 
gently along the serpentine courses of those valleys; 
but if these so-called river beds ever transported water 
along their courses, it had forever been swallowed up 
into the cavernous regions of the adjacent mountain 
masses, and into the huge fissures that cleave the val- 
leys and the low and v/inding chains of hills at high 
angles to their prevailing directions. 

We discovered also here and yonder on the extensive 
lava seas many comparatively small depressions of 
moderate depths and a few tremendous basins, which 
have, pretty generally, irregular outlines. Two of 
those depressions, we perceived, bear on the lower parts 
of their steeper slopes coast lines very indistinctly 
marked and in some respects very much like those 
found on the lower slopes of the mountains adjacent to 
the Great Salt Lake, Utah. Those lines often extend- 
ing great distances on a water level led the selenog- 
raphers to believe that possibly those depressions were 
ancient lake beds. The faint coast lines in question led 
them to think also that vast caverns in the interior, or 
underground lakes, once communicated freely with the 
surface lake basins under discussion, by means of fis- 
sures and other forms of vents which we observed in 
the deeper parts of their floors, and that the contents 
of those lakes might have been swallowed up into those 
immense receptacles from the great depths of which 
the sun with his intense heat would be unable to dis- 
lodge more than traces of its vapor. 

There are still other evidences, it appears to me, that 
water exists in considerable quantities somewhere on 
the mocn. 

At some two or three places we discovered what the 
scientists among our number declared to be sedimen- 



212 TO THE MOON AND 

tary and metamorphic rocks, and at one place — in a 
cavernous region of the Apennine Mountains — a num- 
ber of giant columns, all of which, in my candid opinion, 
furnish at least some evidence that their formation 
and existence are due to the agency of water. 

On account of the highly rarefied state of the atmos- 
phere surrounding the moon, it is not possible for evap- 
oration to take place in any noticeable degree, and 
therefore there can be no rainfall in any form. But 
this fact does not, it seems to me, exclude the possi- 
bility that water exists somewhere on the moon and 
that ages ago it flowed over parts of the surface; for 
sluices of water could have been sent coursing along 
the valleys and over certain parts of the sea floors by 
means of the agency of internal heat alone. 

Some of the members of our comipany said that it 
appeared to them very doubtful whether the seas were 
ever covered by water, or if, since their creation, they 
ever presented a very different appearance from that 
which they now exhibit ; but truly I believe the presence 
of water as an active agency on the moon stands re- 
vealed in the troughing, serpentine valleys resembling 
river beds, the presence in places of sedimentary and 
metamorphic rocks, and the stupendous columns re- 
sembling stalactite and stalagmite formations which 
we found in some of the cavernous structures of the 
older and more elevated parts of the moon's surface. 

At every halt and turn during the tour of our satel- 
lite we looked about us eagerly, faithfully, and patiently 
in full expectation of seeing quadrupeds resembling 
some of God's four-footed creatures on earth bounding 
away from us and in search of a hiding place or a place 
of refuge, but we looked in vain ; for in all our travels 
and researches we found no satisfactory or competent 



BACK IN NINETY DAYS 213 

evidences that anything in the form of vegetable or 
animal life ever existed there. 

Prof. Rider discovered in the solid rock at the mouth 
of a small cavern some marks which bear a slight re- 
semblance to the tracks of small birds or rodents, and 
on one lake floor Capt. Ewald and Mr. Waite found 
small quantities of a loose or detached substance re- 
sembling sea weeds drifted, which on close inspection 
and chemical analysis proved to be m.erely a rocky sub- 
stance of a friable nature. A box of chicken bones 
which Dick Prouty emptied near the ship the day after 
we reached destination was still there at the end of the 
thirty days during which we were touring the moon. 
If animal life as we think of it on earth had existed 
there, possibly these bones would, in the meantime, 
have been devoured. But truly I think none of these 
things are competent or conclusive evidence either way. 

We saw no houses nor places of abode of any kind 
for intelligent beings, no fields nor plantations, no es- 
tablishments of art and industry. And if ever our 
satellite was at any time in its past history the seat of 
all or even a small part of the varied and intense human 
activities that at the present time characterize the sur- 
face of the earth, not the slightest evidence of such 
ancient civilizations, now remains to bear testimony of 
the fact. 

The physical conditions and the landscape views 
everywhere make it appear improbable that the moon 
was ever a world teeming with vegetable and animal 
life like our own planet, but rather that it was, even 
in its palmiest days, a desolate wilderness and barren 
waste. 

Even the lowest forms of vitality cannot exist with- 
out air, moisture, and a moderate range of tempera- 



214 TO THE MOON AND 

ture; and on the moon there is neither. It is incon- 
ceivable that any plant or animal life could survive 
exposure, first to a degree of cold vastly surpassing 
that of our arctic regions, and then in the short time 
of fourteen days to a degree of heat capable, almost, 
of melting the less refractory rocks and the more fusi- 
ble metals— the total range of temperature being equal 
to perhaps 500° of our thermometric scale. And truly 
the dry, flinty, barren nature of the surface, the total 
absence of water, and an atmosphere of so great ten- 
uity, all taken into consideration without the long 
nights of more than arctic cold and the extremely hot 
days a fortnight in length, appear to exclude even the 
possibility of either plant or animal life, at least as we 
think of it on earth. 

In short, the lunar landscape, as it appeared to me 
everywhere as far as the eye could reach, was a realiza- 
tion of a fearful dream of desolation and lif elessness — 
not a dream of death, for that implies evidence of pre- 
existing life; but a vision of a world upon which the 
light of life had never dawned. In other words, I 
think of the moon merely as a fossil world, an ancient 
cinder, a ruined habitation careering through space, 
and perpetuated only to admonish the earth of her own 
impending fate and to teach her occupants that an- 
other home must be prepared or provided which frost 
and decay can never invade. 

(THE END) 



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